Madhattress said:
But now i wonder, if he was talking about benzene or benzine and if this makes a difference.
I'm rather wishing I'd indexed my posts somewhat better (i.e., at all!) as I've typed this stuff out probably dozens of times over the years :lol:
As you may well have figured already, using the term 'benzine' is somewhat problematic and should really be avoided. It's just another name for light naphtha, along with other ones such as petroleum ether (also onomastically problematic), ligroin and a few others. Benzene with the 'e' is the carcinogenic stuff. Not all benzine - with an 'i' - will contain as much hexane as yours does but in this instance, indeed, you really want to avoid exposure to that stuff.
Part of the problem stems from English pronunciation - in several other widespread languages the -in(e) and the -en(e) suffixes are pronounced sufficiently differently that the use of both terms is not so big of a problem and, alas, this keeps the term 'benzine' alive in English somewhat as well. Of course, in German, benzene is called "
Benzol" anyhow (and the term was not wholly alien in the UK either:
National Benzole - Wikipedia ) Incidentally, the German wikipedia has the better etymological explanation:
de.wikipedia.org
Der ursprüngliche Name stammt von dem arabischen Wort für Benzoeharz, luban dschawi – „Weihrauch aus Java“. Dieser Ausdruck gelangte durch arabische Handelsbeziehungen mit Katalonien nach Europa. Mit dem Wegfall der ersten Silbe und der Änderung des ersten a zu e entstand im Italienischen benjuì, im Mittellateinischen benzoë, woraus sich das deutsche Wort Benzol entwickelte.
"The original name comes from the Arabic word for benzoin resin,
luban jawi – "incense from Java". This expression came to Europe through Arab trade relations with Catalonia. With the omission of the first syllable and the change of the first a to e,
benjuì emerged in Italian,
benzoë in Middle Latin, from which the German word
Benzol developed."
In the article it goes on:
"In 1825, Faraday discovered the compound later called benzene in emptied gas cylinders, he called it
bicarbure d'hydrogène at the time, before it was renamed benzine by Eilhard Mitscherlich. However, he used it to refer to today's benzene. Mitscherlich named the substance after the raw material he used, benzoin resin.
The assignment to today's benzine was done by Justus von Liebig. The term "benzine" therefore does not go back to the engine builder Carl Benz, as is sometimes erroneously assumed, in contrast to diesel fuel, which is actually named after Rudolf Diesel. The discovery of the benzine-air mixture as a suitable fuel source for automobiles goes back to Siegfried Marcus."
So it's von Liebig's fault. Good with condensers, not so good with nomenclature
