Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/356

340 metric tons. These figures will justify the statement made at the beginning of this article, that the new industry has found ample capital.

The statement is still current that acetylene attacks copper and brass, forming an explosive compound. This is not true. Exhaustive experiments by Moissan and by Gerdes, keeping these and other metals in contact with acetylene for months at a time, have shown that the metals were not affected. The conditions under which the explosive copper acetylide is made in laboratories can not well occur in generators or gas holders. It has been said that acetylene is very poisonous; the experiments of many observers, and especially those of Gréhant, do not confirm this statement. Gréhant experimented on dogs, causing them to breathe mixtures of acetylene, air, and oxygen, which always contained 20.8 per cent of oxygen, this being the percentage of oxygen in pure air. By this device he was able to discriminate between the poisoning caused by acetylene and suffocation caused by insufficient oxygen. A mixture containing twenty per cent acetylene inhaled for thirty-five minutes did not seem to trouble the animal. A sample of the dog's arterial blood contained ten per cent of acetylene. A dog which inhaled a mixture containing forty per cent of acetylene died suddenly after fifty-one minutes, having inhaled one hundred and twelve litres of the mixture; the arterial blood contained twenty per cent acetylene. Gréhant proved that acetylene simply dissolves in the blood plasma, while carbon monoxide forms a compound with the hæmoglobin of the blood. A dog breathing a similar mixture of air, oxygen, and illuminating gas containing only one per cent of carbon monoxide quickly showed convulsive movements, and died after ten minutes; its blood contained twenty-four per cent of carbon monoxide. Thus acetylene, while slighthy poisonous, is less poisonous than coal gas, and vastly less than water gas, which contains a high percentage of carbon monoxide.

A pressure of thirty-nine atmospheres and three quarters at 20° C. converts acetylene into a liquid weighing one third as much as the same volume of water, while one cubic foot of the liquid when released from pressure gives five hundred cubic feet of gas.

Hitherto acetylene is used only as a source of heat or as a source of light; yet with very cheap carbide it would prove useful in many ways in chemical industry, and its use would have the most widespread effect on industry and agriculture. For instance, a method of making alcohol from acetylene is patented abroad, and by another patented process it is proposed to make sugar from acetylene. With the present prices of alcohol, sugar, and carbide, these processes have no commercial value.

Acetylene may be made from the carbide in gas works and