Spirit strength, determination

SOLUBILITIES OF ESSENTIAL OILS. In the determination of the solubility of an essential oil it is necessary that the alcohol used should be of exactly the required spirit strength, slight deviations causing a considerable difference in solubility in many cases. The limits of specific gravity for the alcohol used are ... 

It must be emphasised that the accurate determination of spirit strength requires considerable care and practice. The following method for its assay in drugs is somewhat more in detail and varies a little from the technique described in the B,P, (Appendix XII, H). 

Table 61 gives the majority of the B.P. and B.P.C. alcoholic preparations and the procedure for the determination of spirit strength (including any special treatment necessary in the individual cases). 

Table 7.2 and Figure 7.2 show data obtained from one round of a proficiency scheme for the determination of the alcoholic strength of a spirit. The results are expressed as % alcohol by volume (%abv). When the participants results are ranked in order of magnitude, the median is the middle value, which in this case is 40.04. The assigned value is therefore 40.04 %abv. 

Figure 7.2 Histogram of data from a proficiency testing round for the determination of the alcoholic strength of a spirit.

The tests to be made on spirits and liqueurs include a certain number which are common to all these products, such as determinations of the alcoholic strength, extract and ash, and tests for impurities and denaturing agents other investigations are made only with certain products, examples of these being the examination of kirschwasser for hydrocyanic acid, the determination of sugars in liqueurs, etc. The former are treated under General Methods and the latter in the Special Part. 

The more composed salts of plants and animals could be analyzed in a manner similar to the simple or fossil salts, except that they held a larger proportion of water or earth, which weakened them. The acid spirits, lixivial salts, and essential salts separated from the plants contained different proportions of the acid salt, which determined their solubility. Volatile and fixed alkali salts were produced by the action of fire. The strength or alkaline force of fixed alkali depended on the... 

This section is divided into two complementary studies. In the first part we concentrate our attention on the short-range water structure around solutes - noble gases and ion pairs - and the difference between the short-range behavior of guv(r) and gw(0 within the spirit of the solvation formalism of Section I. I. We also assess the hydrogen bonding strength as the number of water molecules hydrogen-bonded in the solvent as a function of distance from the solute to determine the extent to which the infinitely dilute solutes affect the... 

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