GASEOUS COMBUSTION AT HIGH PRESSUEES. 



313 



Another very notable and significant feature was the complete absence of both 

 acetylene and ethylene from the final products, which, however, always contained con- 

 siderable quantities of methane, even at the highest pressures. Such facts point to 

 a sufficient violence in the explosion to shatter completely any unsaturated hydro- 

 carbon or acetylene, if indeed such were momentarily found in the flame, and afford 

 also another striking proof of the great stability of methane at the highest explosion 

 temperatures. 



TABLE XVI. Explosion of Mixture C 2 H 6 + O 2 at High Pressures in Bomb A. 



PART VII. PRESSURE EXPERIMENTS. 



The foregoing experiments (Part III.) having proved the absence of any direct 

 connection between the relative affinities of methane, hydrogen and carbon-monoxide, 

 respectively, for oxygen, in homogeneous flame combustion, and the rates of flame 

 propagation through explosive mixtures, in which the combining gases are present in 

 proportions corresponding to the effective primary reactions concerned, it now remained 

 to prove whether or not such chemical factors determine the rates of attainment of the 

 maximum pressures in explosions. 



It had been our original intention to obtain optical records of the complete pressure 

 curves, both before and after the attainment of maximum pressure, when the 

 " primary " mixtures CH 4 +0 2 , 2H 2 +0 2 , and 2CO + 2 , respectively, are exploded at 



