Oxides/oxygen systems in molten alkali nitrates: Remarks and hypotheses concerning recent literature findings
✍ Scribed by Pier Giorgio Zambonin
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1973
- Weight
- 653 KB
- Volume
- 45
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-0728
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In recent papers 1-3 Fredericks et al. have described and discussed some findings relevant to the chemical and electrochemical behaviour of oxides and oxygen in glass-contained molten alkali nitrates. Their conclusion (which can be equated to the old oxide model) appears often in disagreement with the per-superoxide reactions which we recently proposed 4'5 and which are summarized in Fig. 1.
For the reader's convenience, these papers and particularly ref. 1 need some comments which follow, together with hypotheses about the origin of the main discrepancies recently found in this field.
First, I would like to rectify the interpretation given by the above authors to a sentence taken from one of our papers 6 and quoted 1 in support of the thesis that oxide ion (0 2-) is the predominant oxospecies present in nitrate melts. They wrote : "We thought we had found a possible clue to the discrepancy in a recent paper of Zambonin who claimed that "The formation of appreciable quantities of peroxide (0 2 -) and superoxide ( 0~-) according to eqns.** (b) and (c) can be excluded if sufficient + H20 = 1.5 02 g *HaO= 0.5 02 II '-02 2 2 O; ~ 02-O.5 02 ~-] H,O OH-* Work discussed by the author at the EUCHEM meeting on molten salts, Cirencester (G.B.), September 1972. ** The equations referred to are shown in Fig. 1.