Oxygen…a gas which is essential to life, but if not treated with respect, will claim life. As its name implies, it is an oxidising gas which will promote combustion at the slightest provocation. In the context of the gases industry, much care and attention is always paid to this elemental constituent of air.
With a confused discovery date, much publicity has been given to Joseph Priestley since he first published the startling results in 1774, though it was Carl Scheele who had first isolated the gas by heating mercuric oxide in 1772. The gas was finally named ‘oxygen’ by Lavoisier in 1777, from its original name of ‘phlogiston’.
Combustion
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