Experiments on the gas voltaic battery, with a view of ascertaining the rationale of its action and on its application to eudiometry

Abstract

The author, referring to a paper published in the Philosophical Magazine for December 1842, giving an account of a voltaic battery of which the active ingredients are gases, and by which the decomposition of water is effected by means of its composition, describes several variations in the form of the apparatus recorded in that paper. The experiments he has made with this new apparatus, and the details of which occupy the greater part of the present memoir, he conceives establish the conclusion that the phenomena exhibited in the gaseous battery are in strict conformity with Faraday’s law of definite electrolysis. They also confirm him in the opinion which he had expressed in his original paper, and which had been controverted by Dr. Schœnbein, in a communication to the Philosophical Magazine for March 1843, as well as by other philosophers, namely, that the oxygen, in that battery, immediately contributes to the production of the voltaic current. Besides employing as the active agents oxygen and hydrogen gases, he extends his experiments to the following combinations: namely, Oxygen and peroxide of nitrogen; Oxygen and protoxide of nitrogen; Oxygen and olefiant gas; Oxygen and carbonic oxide; Oxygen and chlorine; Chlorine and dilute sulphuric acid; Chlorine and solutions of bromine and iodine in alternate tubes; Chlorine and hydrogen; Hydrogen and carbonic oxide; Chlorine and olefiant gas; Oxygen and binoxide of nitrogen; Oxygen and nitrogen, with solution of sulphate of ammonia; Carbonic acid and carbonic oxide, with oxalic acid as an electrolyte; Hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphate of ammonia. The author concludes, on reviewing the whole of this series of experiments, that, with the exception, perhaps, of olefiant gas, which appears to give rise to an extremely feeble current, chlorine and oxygen, on the one hand, and hydrogen and carbonic oxide, on the other, are the only gases which are decidedly capable of electro-synthetically combining so as to produce a voltaic current. He thinks that the vapours of bromine and of iodine, were they less soluble, would probably also be found efficient as electro-negative gases.