248 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON OZONE, NITROUS ACID, AND NITROGEN. 

 BY T. STERRY HUNT, F.R.S. 



The formation of a nitrite when moist air is ozonized by means of 

 the electric spark (the old experiment of Cavendish) or by phos- 

 phorus, was shown by Rivier and de Fellenberg, who concluded that 

 the reactions ascribed by Schonbein to ozone were due to traces of 

 nitrous acid. The subsequent experiments of Marignac and An- 

 drews have, however, established that ozone is really a modification 

 of oxygen, which Houzeau has shown to be identical with the so- 

 called nascent oxygen, which is evolved, together with ordinary 

 oxygen, when peroxide of barium is decomposed by sulphuric acid 

 at ordinary temperatures. The spontaneous decomposition of a 

 solution of permanganic acid also evolves a similar product having 

 the characters of ozone. 



Believing that the nitrous acid in the above experiments is not an 

 accidental product of electric or catalytic action, but dependent 

 upon the formation of active or nascent oxygen, I caused a current 

 of air to pass through a solution of permanganate of potash mixed 

 with sulphuric acid. The air, which had thus acquired the odour 

 and other reactions of ozone, was then passed through a solution of 

 potash ; by which process it lost its peculiar properties, while the 

 potash solution was found to contain a salt having the reactions of a 

 nitrite. 



As I suggested in this Journal in 1848, 1 conceive gaseous nitrogen 

 to be the anhydride amide or nitryle of nitrous acid, which in con- 

 tact with water might under certain circumstances generate nitrous 

 acid and ammonia. From the instability of the compound of these 

 two bodies, however, it becomes necessary to decompose one at the 

 instant of its formation in order to isolate the other. Certain 

 reducing agents which convert nitrous acid into ammonia may thus 

 transform nitrogen (NN) into 2NH 3 . In this way I explain the 

 action of nascent hydrogen in forming ammonia with atmospheric 

 nitrogen in presence of oxidizing metals and alkalies. (Zinc in 

 presence of a heated solution of potash readily reduces nitrates and 

 nitrites with the evolution of ammonia.) 



Now an agent which, instead of attacking the nitrous acid would 

 destroy the newly formed ammonia, would permit us to isolate the 

 nitrous acid. Houzeau has shown that nascent oxygen is such an 

 agent, at once oxidizing ammonia with formation of nitrate (nitrite ?) 

 of ammonia; and thus when ozone (nascent oxygen) is brought in 

 contact with moist air, both of the atoms of nitrogen in the nitryle 

 (NN) appear in the oxidized state. 



From this view it follows that the odour and most of the reactions 

 ascribed to ozone are due to nitrous acid which is liberated by the 

 decomposition of atmospheric nitrogen in presence of water and 

 nascent oxygen. We have thus a key to a new theory of nitrifica- 

 tion, and an explanation of the experiments of Cloez on the slow 

 formation of nitrite by the action of air exempt from ammonia upon 

 porous bodies moistened with alkaline solutions. — Silliman's Ame- 

 rican Journal for July 1861. 



