Chemistry. — “On the behaviour of Amorphous Carbon and Sulphur 
at High Temperatures and on Carbon-Sulphides”. By Dr. 
J. P. Wipaur. (Communicated by Prof. A. F. HorrEMAN). 
(Communicated at the meeting of May 28, 1921). 
$ 1. Introduction. In 1919 Dr. A. SrorrreL and the author of this 
paper published an inquiry into the sulphurous compounds of coal *). 
The result was briefly as follows: 
A method was elaborated to determine the sulphur combined with 
iron (pyritie sulphur) and the sulphur present as organic compounds 
separately. It was then examined how these anorganic and organic 
sulphur compounds dissociate during the coking of coal, i.e. the 
heating with exciusion of air at temperatures of 1000° and higher. 
It then appeared among other things that during the coking the 
organic sulphur compounds partly yield sulphuretted hydrogen and 
volatile organic sulphur compounds, but that a large proportion of 
the organically bound sulphur from the coal is retained in the coke 
in the form of a sulphur-carbon compound, which does not lose its 
sulphur content at the temperature of 1000°. In gas coke, which 
mostly contains 1—1,5°/, of sulphur, this sulphur appeared to be 
present for the greater part in the form of a carbon-compound, and 
only for a smaller part to be fixed by the anorganic components 
ash components) of the coke. Comparative experiments on the coking 
of ash-containing coal-samples and of coal-samples that had been freed 
from mineral admixtures (ash), taught that during the coking of coal, 
part of the sulphur which is combined with iron as pyrite in the 
coal, is fixed by carbon in the coke. It seems, therefore, that carbon 
can combine with sulphur in some way or other at high temperature. 
This find was very surprising, and not devoid of importance for 
the technics of coke-manufacture. About the same time Parr and 
PoweLL *) published a research on the same subject, which did not 
appear as a magazine article, and did not come under our notice 
until later. The investigators followed another method of research ; 
their results on the whole agree with ours. In two recent papers 
1) Rec. trav. chim. 38, 132 (1919). 
4) A Study of the Forms in which Sulfur occurs in Coal. University of Illinois 
Bulletin. Vol. XVI. NO. 34 (1919). 
