I907.] WILEY AND SCHREIBER— SYNTHETIC ALCOHOL. 123 



if necessary. The inner tube contained commercial zinc (mossy). 

 About 25 cc. pure aldehyde were mixed with one liter dilute hydro- 

 chloric acid (four volumes acid 1.20 sp. gr. to six volumes water) 

 and passed through the reductor until the evolution of hydrogen 

 was very small. The zinc was then precipitated out of the result- 

 ing liquid by sodium carbonate to prevent bumping during distilla- 

 tion. The zinc being filtered off the filtrate was distilled. The 

 distillate was made alkaline with caustic potash and silver nitrate 

 added to oxidize aldehyde and after standing over night the silver 

 was filtered off and the filtrate fractionated. The last distillation 

 was made from an oil bath, a side necked test-tube being used as 

 a retort. The liquid was allowed to stand over anhydrous copper 

 sulfate before this distillation. In this way a fraction was obtained 

 which boiled at 78°-78.7° C. and had the odor and taste of ethyl 

 alcohol. 



Trials were also made with the reductor using zinc amalgam and 

 sulfuric acid, and zinc amalgam and hydrochloric acid, and then 

 using zinc and sulfuric acid, and at last zinc and hydrochloric acid 

 which proved best. The reductor was adopted in preference to 

 making the reduction in a bottle as the liquid in passing over the 

 zinc was thought to give more intimate contact between the acid, 

 aldehyde and zinc than could be obtained by means of a bottle. 

 Aldehyde was now made by the Erdmann-Kothner method by means 

 of apparatus No. 2. The converters were charged with 1500 cc. 

 phosphoric acid sp. gr. 1.15 and 150 grams mercuric oxid. The 

 aqueous aldehyde obtained by running the apparatus 14 hours was 

 mixed with 2 liters dilute hydrochloric acid (4 volumes acid to 6 

 volumes water) and the mixture passed through the reductor (appa- 

 ratus No. 3) after reducing the zinc was precipitated and filtered 

 out, the filtrate distilled and the aldehyde oxidized by silver nitrate', 

 the filtrate from the precipitated silver was fractionated and a small 

 fraction was obtained whose boiling point was 77-S°~7'^-9° C. and 

 which had the characteristic taste and odor of alcohol. 



