WHAT HAPPENED IN THOMSEN’S
KILN? – A DETECTIVE STORY
BY MICHAEL JEWESS
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This
work was published in Royal Society of Chemistry, Historical Group, Newsletter and Summary of Papers.
Abstract
The Danish chemist,
Julius Thomsen (1826-1909), is best known for his work on the periodic table
and on thermochemistry. However, he made
his fortune by a process which manufactured washing soda from cryolite (Na3AlF6)
mined in Greenland, a Danish possession.
The paper applies modern thermodynamic knowledge to understand how his
process works. It raises the intriguing
possibility that one or more compounds believed to have been first discovered
in the 1980s were in fact produced a century before, on an industrial scale, as
an intermediate in Thomsen’s process.
.
Keywords:
washing soda, sodium carbonate, Julius Thomsen, cryolite, Greenland,
Leblanc process, Solvay process.
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