Frederick Augustus Abel

Sir Frederick Augustus Abel, 1st Baronet GCVO KCB FRS (born July 17, 1827 in Woolwich , United Kingdom , † September 6, 1902 in London ) was an English chemist and explosives expert . Together with James Dewar he developed cordite , patented in 1889 , which was later introduced as a standard explosive in the British Army . Abel also conducted studies of dust explosions in coal mines, invented a device to check the flash point of petroleum , and figured out a way to prevent the spontaneous explosion of gun cotton .

Life

Abel was the son of the German-English musician Johann Leopold Abel and great-grandson of Leopold August Abel . His scientific interest grew through his uncle AJ Abel, a mineralogist and student of Jakob Berzelius . After studying for six years at the Royal College of Chemistry (as one of the first students) with August Wilhelm von Hofmann and for a short time as a demonstrator in chemistry at St. Bartholomew Hospital in London, he taught chemistry at the Royal Military from 1851 as the successor to Michael Faraday Academy . Three years later he was appointed as a chemist at the War Ministry , where he worked until 1888. During this time he was mainly concerned with the chemistry of explosives.

He was mainly concerned with the production of gun cotton and developed a process for its safer production, which was patented in 1865. This paved the way for the development of the low smoke powders that were used from the late 19th century onwards. In 1888 he became chairman of a government commission that was supposed to investigate new explosives - the previous ones ( ballistite , poudre B ) were not satisfied because their explosive power decreased with storage. Together with James Dewar , Abel developed cordite , the British version of the low-smoke powder, which was patented in 1889. Alfred Nobel , who developed the similar explosive ballistite, sued Dewar and Abel because their invention was allegedly based on his earlier findings. However, due to the vague formulation of his own patent, the House of Lords finally decided in 1895 in favor of Abel and Dewar.

In 1877 Abel was President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (then the Society of Telegraph Engineers). He worked with the Scottish physicist Andrew Noble on the explosion behavior of black powder. He also developed electric detonators and studied the problems of steelmaking, for which he received the Bessemer Medal of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1897, of which he was president from 1891 to 1893.

Well known is the Abel flashpoint tester for petroleum named after him , which he officially completed in 1879 after more than eleven years of work, but which was recognized in a preliminary form by the British Parliament as the official test method for petroleum products as early as 1868. The Abel test for the chemical stability of explosives based on nitric acid also bears his name .

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860 and also received the Royal Medal in 1887 . From 1887 until his death in 1902 he was the first director of the Imperial Institute (today: Commonwealth Institute ), which he helped to found.

Frederick Abel was on 20 April 1883 as a Knight Bachelor in the knighthood raised. On February 3, 1891, he was inducted into the Order of the Bath as Knight Commander . On May 25, 1893 he was given the hereditary dignity of baronet , of Cadogan Place in the Parish of Chelsea in the County of London , but since Abel remained childless, the line ended with himself. On March 8, 1901, he was named Knight Grand Cross inducted into the Royal Victorian Order .

Abelian equation for internal ballistics

Abel developed the Abel equation for internal ballistics named after him:

It indicates the maximum pressure p of explosives of mass m, which are burned in a volume in an explosion at one temperature . The equation for ideal gases ( Gay-Lussac law ) is used with a correction for the volume occupied by the combustion residues , similar to the Van der Waals equation , by subtracting the covolume . ${\ displaystyle V}$ ${\ displaystyle T_ {ex}}$ ${\ displaystyle \ alpha}$

${\ displaystyle p = f \, \ epsilon {\ frac {\ Delta} {1- \ alpha \, \ Delta}}}$

There are:

${\ displaystyle \, \ Delta}$ the so-called loading density, the amount of explosives in kilograms per volume of the combustion chamber (assumed to be constant), for example the space between the floor of the projectile and the bottom of a cannon barrel.
${\ displaystyle \, f}$ the specific pressure or the explosive force. It is equal to the pressure that the combustion gases generate from 1 kg of explosives at the combustion temperature in a unit volume and results directly from this . ${\ displaystyle T_ {ex}}$ ${\ displaystyle T_ {ex}}$
${\ displaystyle \, \ epsilon}$ indicates the percentage by weight of the explosive that is converted into gases.
${\ displaystyle \, \ alpha}$ is the covolume, which takes into account the cargo residue, given in liters per kilogram of explosives.

Quantities such as co-volume, combustion temperature and specific pressure were previously tabulated as powder constants . Abel's equation as a pyrostatic equation of state is valid up to pressures of around 3000 bar and was published in Abels Researches in Explosives 1874.

For example, for nitroglycerin , the powder constants are 10800 atmospheres for the specific pressure and 0.71 liters per kilogram for the covolume. for black powder a value of 0.49 for the co-volume and 3250 atmospheres for the specific pressure. Depending on the loading density, the maximum pressure with which the expansion of the gases in the cannon barrel begins can be calculated.

Works

Handbook of Chemistry with CL Bloxam
Modern History of Gunpowder (1866)
Gun-cotton (1866)
On Explosive Agents (1872)
Researches in Explosives (1874)
Electricity applied to explosive purposes (1884)

literature

Wikisource: Frederick Augustus Abel - Article of the 4th edition of Meyers Konversations-Lexikon

Abel, Sir Frederick Augustus, Bart. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 1 : A-Androphagi . London 1910, p. 39 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Representation of the Abelian petroleum sampler.

Individual evidence

↑ Article. In: Daintith (Ed.) Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists . CRC, Press 2009
↑ Article Abel in Daintith, loc.cit.
↑ Device description. ( Memento of April 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) at Trilogica .
↑ ^a ^b ^c Knights and Dames: A – BEC at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
↑ No. 26406, p. 3055. In: The London Gazette , May 26, 1893.
^ Cranz: Ballistics . In: Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences , Part 4, Volume 3, 1903, p. 254

personal data
SURNAME	Abel, Frederick Augustus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Abel, Sir Frederick Augustus, 1st Baronet
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	English chemist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 17, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH	Woolwich , UK
DATE OF DEATH	September 6, 1902
Place of death	London

[1] Article. In: Daintith (Ed.) Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists . CRC, Press 2009

[2] Article Abel in Daintith, loc.cit.

[3] Device description. ( Memento of April 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) at Trilogica .

[LRP-4] Knights and Dames: A – BEC at Leigh Rayment's Peerage

[5] No. 26406, p. 3055. In: The London Gazette , May 26, 1893.

[6] Cranz: Ballistics . In: Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences , Part 4, Volume 3, 1903, p. 254