Potassium sulfite

History

Potassium sulfite was first obtained by Georg Ernst Stahl in the early 18th century, and was therefore known afterwards as Stahl's sulphureous salt. It became the first discovered sulfite and was first properly studied along with other sulfites by French chemists in the 1790s, and it was called sulphite of potash in the early 19th century. Gilles-François Boulduc also discovered the salt in water of Passy in the 1720s.

Production and reactions

Main article: Sulfite#Reactions

Potassium sulfite is produced by the thermal decomposition of potassium metabisulfite at 190 °C: :

Structure

The structure of solid , as assessed by X-ray crystallography. The S-O distances are 1.515 Å, and the O-S-O angles are 105.2°

References

References

1. "Potassium sulfite (225)". Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
2. Coleby, L. J. M.. (1938). "Studies in the chemical works of Stahl". University of London.
3. Thomson, Thomas. (1807). "System of Chemistry".
4. Chang, Ku-ming (Kevin). (2014). "Communications of Chemical Knowledge: Georg Ernst Stahl and the Chemists at the French Academy of Sciences in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century". Osiris.
5. (1946). "Inorganic Syntheses".
6. (1986). "The Structure of Potassium Sulfite". Acta Chemica Scandinavica.