The flame spectra of carbon monoxide and water-gas. —Part I

Abstract

As part of my work as the Gas Light & Coke Company’s Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, South Kensington, I was asked to undertake a systematic investigation of the flame spectra of carbon monoxide, and of mixtures of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, under the joint supervision of Prof. W. A. Bone and Prof. A. Fowler, with a view to the elucidation, if possible, of certain aspects of the combustion of carbon monoxide which have been referred to in recent publications upon the subject. The present paper embodies the results of my experiments. The characteristic blue appearance of the highly radiative flame of carbon monoxide burning in air is, of course, well known; but on looking into the literature oi the subject, very little appears to have been published concerning the flame spectrum of carbon monoxide, which has not yet been adequately described. In 1901 Smithells recorded that the flame of carbon monoxide gives a continuous spectrum whether burning in air, oxygen or nitrous oxide, and that the same is also true when the combustion is inverted by burning oxygen in an atmosphere of carbon monoxide. He referred also to a previous observation of Burch’s that when the gas is burnt under reduced pressure, its spectrum becomes discontinuous, and that the maxima of light, though ill-defined, are in such positions as suggest that they are vestiges of oxy-carbon bands.