Sal-ammoniac

The product may be dissolved in alcohol, and on addition of a small quantity of ammonia or sal-ammoniac will exhibit all the essential properties of a tincture of musk. 

Ldt-sahniak, m. sal ammoniac for soldering, -salz, n. soldering salt, -saure, /. soldering acid, -stelle, /. soldered place place to be soldered junction (of a thermocouple). 

Salmiak, m. sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride). -clement, n. Elec.) sal ammoniac cell, Leclanch cell, -geist, m. aqueous ammonia, -kristall, m. (crystallized) sal ammoniac, -lakritze, /. sal ammoniac-licorice pastilles. -Idsung, /. ammonium chloride solution, -salz, n. sal volatile (ammonium carbonate) ... 

Because of its ability to react with metal oxides, NH4C1 has been used as a soldering flux for many years. Removing the oxide on the surface of the object allows a strong joint to be produced. In older nomenclature, NH4C1 was known as sal ammoniac. 

Aqua Regia. Geber described the preparation of nitric acid (aqua fortis) in his De inventione veritatis, and added that, if one adds sal ammoniac to this acid it becomes a more powerful solvent (5, 16). Raymond Lully (Raimundo Lulio) and Albert the Great (St. Albert) prepared it in the same way. By the time the writings attributed to Basil Valentine were published, hydrochloric acid (acid of salt) was known, this work describes the preparation of aqua regia by mixing three parts of hydrochloric acid with one part of nitric acid (16,17). J. R. Glauber prepared it from common salt and nitric acid and from saltpeter and hydrochloric acid (18). 

Sal Ammoniac. In the tenth century A D, Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan prepared by distillation of blood or hair a volatile product which he called sal ammoniac from blood or sal ammoniac from hair. This was probably salt of hartshorn, or ammonium carbonate (23). 

Sal ammoniac was probably first introduced from Persia (56). In the Invention of Verity, or Perfection which has been attributed to Pseudo-Geber, the preparation of sal ammoniac from human urine, perspiration, common salt, and soot of woods is described (24, 25). 

Robert Boyle stated in 1661, in his Sceptical Chymist, drat sal ammoniac is composed of muriatic (hydrochloric) acid and the volatile alkali (ammonia) and told how to separate the urinous and common salts (27). In 1716 Geoffroy the Younger demonstrated the composition of sal ammoniac and prepared it by sublimation (28, 29). In the same year, the Jesuit missionary Father Sicard described its preparation at Dam ire or Damayer, one mile from die City of El Mansura in the Nile Delta. In twenty-five large laboratories and several smaller ones, it was sublimed in glass vessels from die soot of die burned dung of camels and cows, to which, he said, had been added salt and urine. Lemere, the French consul at Cairo, described die process in 1719 for the Academy of Sciences in Paris, but made no mention of salt or urine (29, 30, 31). 

E.-F. GeofEroy stated that sal ammoniac, because of its volatility and die manner in which it used to be prepared, was often called the heavenly eagle, the flying lUtle bird, die solar salt, or die mercurial soot (43). Herman Boerhaave believed diat, since Vesuvius and other volcanoes eject sal ammoniac, it is therefore necessary to class this salt with die fossils, although it is believed that that which is now being brought to us is an animal production (75). By die word fossil Boerhaave and his contemporaries meant a mineral, or substance dug from the earth. 

In 1759 Robert Dossie corrected the false belief that sal ammoniac was found in the earth in Oriental countries only where the caravans had rested. But I know it to be an undoubted fact, said he, that sal Ammoniacus is sublimed in a considerable quantity out of 1he chinks or cracks of the earth, in the Sulfiterra (solfatara), near Naples. . . and it is certain, as the salt so sublimed must be raised from vast caverns which lie deep in the earth, its origin cannot be ascribed to the urine... 

Ammonia. Haim undo Lulio (Raymond Lully) mentioned caustic ammonia in the thirteenth century (36). Johann Kunckel (or Kunkel) von Lowenstem (1630-1702) described it in his posthumously published Vollstandiges Laboratorium Chymicum (37). He prepared it by adding lime to sal ammoniac (38). 

New occurrences of selenium were found in rapid succession. J. E. F. Giese of Dorpat, Pleischl of Prague, B. Scholz of Vienna, W. Meissner, J. G. Children, and H. von Meyer all found it in the deposits from various kinds of sulfuric acid. Pleischl detected it in the molybdenite of Schlag-genwald F. Stromeyer, in the volcanic sal ammoniac from the Lipari Islands R. Brandes, in the volcanic sal ammoniac of Lanzarote Island (32). Stromeyer and J. F. Hausmann, DuMenil, J. B. Trommsdorff, J. K. L. Zincken, and Heinrich Rose detected its presence in several minerals (33, 34). 

Dr. Wollaston dissolved a portion of crude platinum in aqua regia, and neutralized the excess acid with caustic soda. He then added sal ammoniac to precipitate the platinum as ammonium chloroplatinate, and mercuric cyanide to precipitate the palladium as palladious cyanide. After filtering the precipitate, he decomposed the excess mercuric cyanide in the filtrate by adding hydrochloric acid and evaporating to dryness. When he washed the residue with alcohol, everything dissolved except a beautiful dark red powder, which proved to be a double chloride of sodium and a new metal (3), which, because of the rose color of its salts, Dr. Wollaston named rhodium (9). He found that the sodium rhodium chloride could be easily reduced by heating it in a current of hydrogen, and that after the sodium chloride had been washed out, the rhodium remained as a metallic powder. He also obtained a rhodium button. 

After the Abb6 Lazaro Spallanzani (1729-1799) found an unworked deposit of native alum (alumte) in a grotto at Cape Miseno, near Naples, M H. Klaproth analyzed some specimens of it which John Hawkins collected tiiere. The Abbe Scipione Breislak described the extensive alunite deposits at Solfatara in 1792-93 and afterward became the director of an alum works tiiere. In his Travels in the Two Sicilies and Some Parts of the Apennines, Spallanzani wrote It is well known that for a long time alum and sal ammoniac have been extracted from this half-extinguished volcano (Solfatara). The methods employed were as follows In the process for the alum, certain square places were cleared out in die plain of Solfatara, in which it effloresced, and the efflorescences were swept together, and from them, by methods well known, the salt was collected purified. The sal ammoniac fumes were allowed to condense on pieces of tile near the apertures from which that salt issued. 

In July, 1824, Lanzarote Island was shaken by violent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. When R. Brandes analyzed some of the volcanic sal ammoniac which formed a thin yellow, orange, or brown crust over the lava, he found it to contain both selenium and iodine (137). When he opened the small chest in which E. Waite of Bremen had shipped specimens of these volcanic minerals to him, Brandes noticed a faint odor of iodine, which was easily identified after gentle warming of the sal ammoniac (137,138). 

Daniel (Ref 1) stated that Vor fulminant deposits as a chamois (clear yel) powder on tteating gold trichloride with ammonia. The same method is listed by Davis on p 401, who also says that the method of prepn by Basil. Valentin succeeded because the sal ammoniac used for the prepn of the aqua regia supplied the necessary ammonia. If gold is dissolved in aqua regia prepd from nitric acid and common salt, and if. the soln is treated with K carbonate, the resulting ppt is not expl. FG loses its expl props if it is allowed to stand in contact with sulfur... 

Sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) had been known from antiquity, it being easily obtained by sublimation from animal refuse (urine) and from coal soot, chimney sweepings, etc. Its virtues seemed to lie in its volatility, that is its spirituality. Here are a few remarks from Lemerys book. 

Here the implicit view is that the properties of the ingredients are also those of the combination, a concept of blending of properties rather than a discontinuous chemical transformation. The sal ammoniac can be decomposed by treating it with quicklime. His explanation is based on the familiar idea that acids and alkalies attract and destroy each others properties ... 

The residue of the reaction above with sal ammoniac and salt of tartar was significant to Lemery for it was a source of febrifugous salt, which... 

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