THE Dr. Bennett F Davenport, 751 TRENNT ST. BOSTON, -- MASS. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY, PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHARMACY. EDITED BY WILLIAM PROCTER, JR. Professor of Pharmacy in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. PHILADELPHIA: MERRIHEW & THOMPSON, PRINTERS, Lodge street, North side of Pennsylvania Bank. 1858. THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. JANUARY, 1858. PURIFICATION OF LIQUIDS IN THE STATE OF VAPOR. NEW APPARATUS FOR RECTIFYING SPIRITS. By EDWARD R. SQUIBB, M. D. Some two years since it occurred to the writer that various liquids might be well and easily purified and isolated, during the processes for their production, by washing the vapor as produced, just as fixed gases have long been washed and purified. The first practical application of this method was in the manufacture of ether, wherein the vapors from the still were made to pass first through milk of lime, then through a cooler kept at a fixed temperature, and then through dry chloride of calcium. This experiment having been quite successful, the application was extended to the processes for chloroform, and hyponitrous ether (for spirit of nitre) with the same success. The conditions necessary are simply that the vapor shall pass into the purifying liquid in a finely divided state, as through a delivery tube perforated with fine holes; and that the purifying liquid be kept at a temperature as near as possible to, but always above the boiling point of the liquid whose vapor is to be purified. Or, if the purifying agent be dry that the vapor be passed through repeated portions of it, under the same condition of temperature of Thus these purifiers are simply introduced between the still and final condenser in the apparatus for manufacture. course. After the successful application of this method, in examining into the manufacture of alcohol in search of the difficulty there is in getting a spirit that is free from the grain oil impurities, it appeared to the writer that the method was easily applicable to the manufacture of Cologne spirit," as the better kind of alcohol is now called. In the production of this Cologne spirit, the rectifying distillers leech" the whiskey by passing it " |