Ethanol Pre-History
Ethanol has been used by humans since prehistory as the intoxicating ingredient in alcoholic beverages. Dried residues on 9000-year-old pottery found in northern China imply the use of alcoholic beverages even among Neolithic peoples. Its isolation as a relatively pure compound was first achieved by Islamic alchemists who developed the art of distillation during the Abbasid caliphate, the most notable of whom was Al-Razi. The writings attributed to Jabir Ibn Hayyan (Geber) (721-815) mention the flammable vapors of boiled wine. Al-Kindī (801-873) unambiguously described the distillation of wine. Distillation of ethanol from water yields a product that is at most 96% ethanol, because ethanol forms an azeotrope with water. Absolute ethanol was first obtained in 1796 by Johann Tobias Lowitz, by filtering distilled ethanol through charcoal.
Antoine Lavoisier described ethanol as a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and in 1808, Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure determined ethanol's chemical formula. In 1858, Archibald Scott Couper published a structural formula for ethanol: this places ethanol among the first chemical compounds to have their chemical structures determined.
Ethanol was first prepared synthetically in 1826, through the independent efforts of Henry Hennel in Britain and S.G. Sérullas in France. Michael Faraday prepared ethanol by the acid-catalysed hydration of ethylene in 1828, in a process similar to that used for industrial ethanol synthesis today.
2 comments:
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ethanol is nothing but alcohol. Ethanol is also known as ethyl alcohol. Ethanol is widely used in pharmaceutical preparations. Mainly ethanol 96%is used in formulations.
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