118 WILEY AND SCHREIBER— SYNTHETIC ALCOHOL. [April 20, 



dilution with an equal weight of water will give nearly the entire 

 ethyl content as alcohol. He estimates that 95,000 hectoliters 

 alcohol could be produced from the coal gas which is annually pro- 

 duced in Germany. As we do not know that alcohol is at present 

 produced from coal gas we suppose that there are still difficulties 

 which prevent it. 



The matter has not yet lost all its interest and appears occasion- 

 ally even in economic guise. Since the commercial production of 

 calcium carbide much interest has centered in the possibility of 

 building alcohol from it. Frazee^ gives four possible methods of 

 building alcohol from acetylene. The first consists in passing hydro- 

 gen and acetylene over platinum black and so gaining ethylene 

 according to the equation CoHo + 2H = CoH^ then absorbing the 

 ethylene in sulfuric acid, diluting the ethyl sulfate and distilling off 

 alcohol, QH.+H.SO^^CoH.HSO^ : CH.HSO.+H^O^CH.OH 

 -\- HoSO^. This method was not tried as Wilde^ states that if 

 hydrogen and acetylene are passed over platinum black ethane is 

 formed and no ethylene. Frazee's second possibility is to build 

 ethane from acetylene then make the chlorine substitution product 

 (ethyl chlorid) and saponify this with KOH. This method would 

 undoubtedly give alcohol but in a round about way. His third 

 method is the building of acetaldehyde from acetylene and reduction 

 to alcohol. This method is the best of the four which he gives and 

 was the one by which we were finally able to make alcohol. His 

 fourth method is the ethylene iodide method which consists in ab- 

 sorbing acetylene in hydriodic acid, oxidizing the ethylene iodide 

 to acetaldehyde by means of lead oxid and then reducing the acet- 

 aldehyde to alcohol. This method has been found very difficult by 

 Kriiger and Piickert^ and was not tried by us. 



Of all the methods found by us, the one given in The Electrical 

 Reviezv (for 1899, P^g"^ 375) seemed the simplest and most direct. 

 Here the acetylene is absorbed by a solution of chromium ammonium 

 sulfate in which hydrogen is generated electrolytically which con- 

 verts the acetylene to ethylene. This ethylene passing out of the 



^ Iowa Academy of Science, 1904, Vol. XXL, p. 179. 



^Berichte, 7, 1874, p. 353. 



^ Chem. Ind., 18, 1895, p. 454. 



