II. The action of heat upon ethylene. II

Abstract

In a paper communicated to this Society in the spring of 1894, I showed that ethylene, when subjected to heat, was converted into acetylene and methane, according to the equation 3C2H4 = 2C2H2+2CH4, and that the acetylene so formed either at once polymerised, forming a large number of secondary products, or else decomposed to carbon and hydrogen, according to the temperature at which the action was being carried on.