Alum: Encyclopedia II - Alum - Alchemical and later discoveries and uses

Alum - Alchemical and later discoveries and uses

The presence of sulfuric acid in potash alum was known to the alchemists. J. H. Pott and A. S. Marggraf demonstrated that alumina was another constituent. Pott in his Lithogeognosia showed that the precipitate obtained when an alkali is poured into a solution of alum is quite different from lime and chalk, with which it had been confounded by G.E. Stahl. Marggraf showed that alumina is one of the constituents of alum, but that this earth possesses peculiar properties, and is one of the ingredients in common clay. He also showed that crystals of alum cannot be obtained by dissolving alumina in sulfuric acid and evaporating the solutions, but when a solution of potash or ammonia is dropped into this liquid, it immediately deposits perfect crystals of alum.

Torbern Bergman also observed that the addition of potash or ammonia made the solution of alumina in sulfuric acid crystallize, but that the same effect was not produced by the addition of soda or of lime, and that potassium sulfate is frequently found in alum.

After M.H. Klaproth had discovered the presence of potassium in leucite and lepidolite, it occurred to L.N. Vauquelin that it was probably an ingredient likewise in many other minerals. Knowing that alum cannot be obtained in crystals without the addition of potash, he began to suspect that this alkali constituted an essential ingredient in the salt, and in 1797 he published a dissertation demonstrating that alum is a double salt, composed of sulfuric acid, alumina, and potash. Soon after, J.A. Chaptal published the analysis of four different kinds of alum, namely, Roman alum, Levant alum, British alum and alum manufactured by himself. This analysis led to the same result as that of Vauquelin.

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