XVIII. An account of some experiments on different combinations of fluoric acid

Abstract

Two years ago, I engaged, at the request of my brother, Sir H. Davy, in an inquiry respecting the nature of common fluoric acid gas. My principal object was to ascertain whether silex is essential to its constitution, and whether the proportion is constantly the same. This subject, and experiments on the fluoric and fluoboracic acids, occupied me for about six months. Since that time, the work of M. M. Gay Lussac and Thenard has appeared, entitled “ Recherches Physico-Chemiques," in the second volume of which is an elaborate dissertation on fluoric acid. These philosophers, I find, have anticipated many of my results, and consequently very much abridged my labour of detail in the following pages. To repeat what is already known would be useless, I shall therefore confine myself to describe what I have observed, which appears to me yet novel, or different from the observations of the French chemists. The order which I shall pursue, will be that which I observed in my experiments. I shall divide what I have to advance into four parts. The first part will relate to the silicated fluoric acid gas, and to the subsilicated fluoric acid; the second to the combinations of these acids, and of pure fluoric acid with ammonia; the third to fluoboracic acid; and the fourth to its ammoniacal salts. Sect. 1. On silicated fluoric acid Gas, and Subsilicated fluoric Acid. The facts which have already been published by M. M. Gay Lussac and Thenard and others, appear to me to be sufficient to prove that pure fluoric acid has not yet been obtained in the gaseous state, and that silex, or boracic acid, is requisite that it may assume this form. Were more evidences necessary, I could advance many in point. One circumstance only I shall mention, proving that common fluoric acid gas is perfectly saturated with silex. I have preserved this gas, made by heating, in a glass retort, a mixture of fluor spar and sulphuric acid, for several wreeks over mercury in a glass receiver uncoated with wax, without observing the slightest erosion to be produced.*