Abstract
PROF. W. A. BONE, who delivered the third Liversidge Lecture before the Chemical Society on Dec. 11, chose for his subject “Fifty Years' Experimental Research upon the Influence of Steam on the Combustion of Carbonic Oxide (1880–1930)”. Commencing with the late Prof. H. B. Dixon's abandonment of classics for science in 1876, Prof. Bone referred to his repetition of Bunsen's work and his observation (communicated to the British Association at Swansea in 1880) that a mixture of carbon monoxide and oxygen, if dried at the ordinary pressure over phosphorus pentoxide, becomes non-explosive when sparked in the usual way. Examination of the effect of various third substances led him to adopt the view that the action of moisture is chemical and due to the hydrogen contained in it, the pure, dry reactants being mutually inert. Moreover, the speed of flame propagation had a minimum value in the dried mixture and a maximum value in the presence of nearly 6 per cent of moisture.
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Influence of Steam on the Combustion of Carbonic Oxide. Nature 126, 974 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/126974a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/126974a0