HYDROLYSIS OF UREA HYDROCHLORIDE. 125 



On the HYDROLYSIS of UREA HYDROCHLORIDE. 

 By George Joseph Burrows, b.Sc 



[Read before the Royal Society of N. S. Wales, October 1, 1919.1 



The hydrolysis of urea hydrochloride in aqueous solutions 

 has been investigated by Walker 1 and Walker and Wood. 2 

 These authors found that the salt was hydrolysed by water 

 into urea and free hydrochloric acid, the amount so hydro- 

 lysed at any dilution being expressed by the equation 



K= h2 

 (l-h)v 



where h is the fraction of salt hydrolysed 



v is the volume in litres containing 1 gram molecule 

 of the salt (total) 

 and K is the equilibrium constant. 



The results contained in the present paper were obtained 

 during an investigation of the properties of water-alcohol 

 and water-acetone mixtures. In such mixtures the total 

 amount of water present can be decreased considerably 

 without altering the total volume of the solution, and it 

 appeared of interest to see how such a change in the 

 nature of the solution would affect the degree of hydrolytic 

 dissociation of urea hydrochloride. It has been found that 

 in these mixtures the equilibrium between hydrolysed and 

 unhydrolysed urea hydrochloride can also be expressed in 

 terms of Ostwald's dilution law for electrolytic dissociation. 

 Some of the results included in this paper were published 

 m a previous paper on the rate of decomposition of urea in 



1 Zeit. physik. Chem. IV, 319. a J.C.S., 1903, 83, 484. 



