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Post by habashi on Jan 4, 2006 5:43:58 GMT
In the aluminum industry aluminum hydroxide, Al(OH)3 is sometimes referred to as aluminum oxide tri-hydrate, Al2O3.3H2O. This is wrong and should be abandoned
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Post by kjones on Jan 4, 2006 8:56:08 GMT
This may be a silly question, but why does this mix up in terminology occur?
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Post by Fathi Habashi on Jan 7, 2006 8:27:56 GMT
Why ? So that everybody understands what we are talking about. Please read the correspondence published in Minerals Engineering 14(9), 1121-1122 (2001) that I have just copied in Terminology 1 at the request of participants
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Post by barrywills on Jan 7, 2006 12:05:04 GMT
This may be a silly question, but why does this mix up in terminology occur? Fathi, I think the question Mr. Jones posed was not why this is important, but why such mix ups occur?
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Post by Fathi Habashi on Jan 11, 2006 9:19:28 GMT
Sorry for that. The mix-up is of historical origin. When bauxite was discovered in1821 by Pierre Berthier (1782-1861) in southern France, chemical analysis showed that it contained Al2O3 and H2O in the ratio 1:2. It was thought, therefore, that it contained Al2O3.2H2O. However, when differential thermal analysis was invented at the beginning of the twentieth century it was found that bauxite contained a mixture of AlOOH and Al(OH)3 which is stoichiometrically the same as the dihydrate, Al2O3.2H2O. Some old fashined chemists kept the old terminology: monohydrate, dihydrate, and trihydrate, and so the error is perpetuated.
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