The Intensive Drying of Liquids

Abstract

THE well-known work of Prof. H. B. Baker on the properties of liquids and solids which have stood for long periods of time in closed vessels with phosphorus pentoxide is of the greatest importance to chemists. Since the publication of Prof. Baker's 1922 paper, in which he reported a remarkable change in some of the physical properties of ten liquids which had been dried for from eight and one-half to twenty-eight years with phosphorus pentoxide, the problem of the influence of traces of water on pure chemical substances has been of controversial interest. Several authors have described experiments which are interpreted as confirming Prof. Baker's work (Smits, J. Chem. Soc., 125, 1068; 1924: Mali, Z. anorg. Chem., 149, 150; 1925: J. W. Smith, J. Chem. Soc., 867; 1928), while I have not been able to check this work (Lenher and Daniels, Proc. Nat. Acad., 14, 606; 1928) with benzene and carbon tetrachloride which had been dried for from four to four and one-half years (1923–1928). The difficulties of repeating Prof. Baker's experiments are very great, because experiments carried out in a drying time less than that taken by him, which do not effect a change in the dried liquids, can always be met with the practically unanswerable criticism that intensive drying had not been obtained.