38.—Development of Ideas concerning the Carbon Dioxide System in Sea Water up to 1940.

Abstract

SynopsisMarcet reported in 1822 that sea salt contained lime, and several investigators confirmed its presence in sea water in the 1830s. Darondeau found dissolved CO2in sea water in 1838, and von Bibra in 1851 considered sea water to be slightly alkaline. Tornöe in 1880 pointed out that this condition required part of the CO2to be bound chemically, and Hamberg applied the mass action law to the CO2-system in sea water in 1885. For nearly 50 years, however, despite the development of the concepts of pH and activity, attempts to apply the law in detail failed, first because the behaviour of H2CO3and HCO3−as weak acids is strikingly different in pure water, sea water or NaCl solutions, and secondly because the presence and role of another weak acid, boric acid, was not recognised fully until 1933. Investigators often attributed their failures to some mysterious ability of the sea to disregard or evade the laws of physical chemistry. Buch in 1933 and 1938 finally laid this hobgoblin to rest, and his results are still accepted with only minor modifications.