Note 9 — Chapter XI · THE HALOGENS: CHLORINE, BROMINE, IODINE, AND FLUORINE

Investigations on the solubility of chlorine in water (the solutions evolve all their chlorine on boiling and passing air through them) show many different peculiarities. First Gay-Lussac, and subsequently Pelouze, determined that the solubility increases between 0° and 8°–10° (from 1½ to 2 vols. of chlorine per 100 vols. of water at 0° up to 3 to 2¾ at 10°). In the following note we shall see that this is not due to the breaking-up of the hydrate at about 8° to 10°, but to its formation below 9°. Roscoe observed an increase in the solubility of chlorine in the presence of hydrogen—even in the dark. Berthelot determined an increase of solubility with the progress of time. Schönbein and others suppose that chlorine acts on water, forming hypochlorous and hypochloric acids, (HClO + HCl).

The equilibrium between chlorine and steam as gases and between water, liquid chlorine, ice, and the solid crystallo-hydrate of chlorine is evidently very complex. Gibbs, Guldberg (1870) and others gave a theory for similar states of equilibrium, which was afterwards developed by Roozeboom (1887), but it would be inopportune here to enter into its details. It will be sufficient in the first place to mention that there is now no doubt (according to the theory of heat, and the direct observations of Ramsay and Young) that the vapour tensions at one and the same temperature are different for the liquid and solid states of substances; secondly, to call attention to the following note; and, thirdly, to state that, in the presence of the crystallo-hydrate, water between O°·24 and +28°·7 (when the hydrate and a solution may occur simultaneously) dissolves a different amount of chlorine than it does in the absence of the crystallo-hydrate.