Electrolytic dissociation in non-aqueous solutions

✍ Scribed by Henry Jermain Maude Creighton

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1916
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 796 KB
• Volume: 182
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(16)90058-9

✦ Synopsis

DURING recent years a great deal of work has been carried out in order to determine whether the laws which have been found to hold for electrolytes in aqueo~ls solution also apply in the case of non-aqueous solutions. As a result of these investigations, in some cases it has been found the same laws which hold for aqueous solutions also apply to non-aqueous solutions; in many others this is apparently not true. Indeed, up to the present time, very few generalizations have been obtained. One of the most important generalizations that has been discovered is: a certain affinity between solute and solvent is necessary in order that conduction, that is, dissociation, may take place at all. 1

Early Investigations.--One of the earliest and most systematic investigators in the field of non-aqueous solutions is Paul Walden, who, as early as 1899, found 2 that liquid sulphur dioxide has a remarkable power of dissolving the most varied substances, both inorganic and organic, the solutions often showing a characteristic color. Thus the iodides of sodium, potassium and ammonium dissolve in liquid sulphur dioxide forming yellow solutions. Among the organic compounds which are soluble in this solvent are alcohol, benzoic acid, phenol, ethyl acetate and aniline. The fact that the substances dissolved in this solvent readily react with one another indicates that they are dissociated. Thus, by double decomposition, KI X (CH ~)~NCI = KCI X (CH .)4NI.

All these substances are soluble in liquid sulphur dioxide, except potassium chloride which precipitates out of solution. The con-