60 Processes for Potassium. 
Arr. V,—Description of a newly mole senna for obtaining - 
Potassium, accompanied by remarks on the Redistillation and 
Preservation of this metal ; by L. D. ee M.D. Assistant to 
the Professor of Chemistry in the College of Ebyscians.§ and 
Surgeons in the city of New York. 
TO PROFESSOR SILLIMAN. 
Dear Sir.—Since you did me the honor to publish in this Journal 
an account of some experiments performed in the laboraiory of the 
College of Physicians,* &c., [ have repeated those experiments with 
the view of improving some part of the apparatus, and particularly 
the receiver. It will be recollected that the receiver of the appara- 
tus above alluded to, consists of an inch and a half tube of wrought 
iron screwed into the retort. 
A serious objection to this receiver is, that it becomes clogged, long 
before the operation is finished ; and notwitistanding we can clear it 
once or twice, by means of an iron rod, adapted to the purpose, yet - 
it soon becomes completely filled, and impermeable to the rod, thus 
obliging us oftentimes to stop the process before it is half completed. 
The first substitute for the tube receiver consisted of a common 
quicksilver bottle connected with the retort, (also a quicksilver bottle,) 
by astraight piece of wrought iron, screwed into the mouth of each 
bottle. A small hole was bored in the opposite end of the receiver, 
for inserting a smaller iron tube, termed the safety tube, for dis- 
charging the uncondensed gases. 
The advantages proposed in this kind of receiver over that form- 
erly used were, Ist. To avoid any interruption of the process, until 
all the metal contained in the retort had distilled over. 2nd. 
make use of the receiver for redistilling the potassium. This is done 
by unscrewing the end of the tube next to the retort, stopping 
the hole for the safety tube by an iron plug, and lastly inverting 
the receiver into the furnace to redistil its contents, without the 
trouble and expense of using naphtha, transferring the materials t0 
another vessel for redistillation, and heating the furnace a second time: 
My first object was‘completely achieved by this apparatus. The 
second, was not so happily accomplished. The receiver was t00 
large, affording so much surface of iron (which in these bottles 18 
always more or less oxidated) that the potassium acquires oxygen from 
Se a Le SN ENE MCI 
* See Vol. XIX, p. 205, 
