This receipt is for a large tank of 'Brown Acid'
Rejecting the idea of muddy LSD, what particular acid might this be?

🔗103395[linkphoto]103395[/linkphoto][/link]

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I believe that impure industrial Sulfuric Acid is sometimes brownish in colour.

Edit: "Vitriol" in the company name seems to indicate one of their products may have been Oil of Vitriol. Their premises were here.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1650825 

If you listen to the original Woodstock festival triple LP (on vinyl of course) you will hear a stage announcement warning the assembled masses to stay away from the brown acid as it was not too good.

(I feel I may well just have exposed myself as an aging hippy - ah well, I guess there are worse things to be).

The acid we use to unblock drains used to be a deep brown colour and that was concentrated sulphuric.

They seem to have found a way to make it pink now ::)

I doubt there is a mining application for pink acid?

I used to sample and measure Phosphoric Acid shipments for ICI on the Tees. There was a technical grade which was brown and tended to settle a lot of sludge. I still have a bottle of the good stuff at home which is clear and water-white. Great for cleaning concrete.

Mark

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I recall the anfo used at Brightling was pink when I went there 20 or so years ago. They said it was due to being mixed with red diesel. That's what I remember, anyway!

We used to use sulphuric acid to "pickle" steel tubes to remove the mill scale prior to galvanising. The strong acid which was diluted to make the pickle acid was referred to as brown oil of vitriol or B.O.V.

The conc sulphuric used to clear drains that used to be brown was marketed under the trade name Flowrite.

I once used some to unblock a drain in a lab that had been disused for 7 years when we moved back in, turned out there was a nest of rats in the dilution trap under the sink.

The smell was so bad we went to the pub for the rest of the afternoon!

Conc. Nitric oxidises brown when stood, used to be the only 'brown' acid in the lab.

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I recall the anfo used at Brightling was pink when I went there 20 or so years ago. They said it was due to being mixed with red diesel. That's what I remember, anyway!

Peter, whilst the red diesel does impart some colour, additional dye was added to the diesel so that the mix was more apparent. The dye was called Waxoline Red. Speaking from experience in the Midlands, ANFO was produced using a screw mixer with a couple of diesel nozzles arranged along the length of the barrel. Occasionally the mix was not quite right and so would be run back through. Small variations tended to equalise after being joggled for 3 or 4 miles in the back of a Land Rover and then being tipped into the pneumatic loader. It (almost) always went bang...... :offtopic:

I have some drain cleaner, which was bought in B&Q and is 93% sulphuric acid. It is definitely brown, and doubtless that is due to various impurities.

It seems to me rather remarkable that such stuff is sold to the general public while you would need to take immense precautions to use it legally in industry nowadays. There is a very real risk of a serious or even fatal accident with stuff like that.

But it does clear drains rather well, although caustic soda also does and is just very slightly safer. Again, industrial use needs precautions, but Joe Public is considered to be expandable if a profit can be made.

I understand that it is even possible for the public to get small quantities of hydrofluoric acid for etching glass. Well, that is a real killer, even in small quantities. Someone who went to school with me died after less than a year in his job due to a splash on his face.

Anyway, I am digressing. I concur that this brown acid was almost certainly sulphuric.

I agree with Morlock - the big clues being the word Vitriol (the olde fashioned name for H2SO4) and 'Carboys'

Sulphuric Acid hydrolyses anything organic, turning brown and ultimately black as carbon is released.

We'll probably never know for sure exactly what the 'Brown Acid' was, but for me the clever money goes on Sulphuric.

Even better than Cillit Bang for cleaning ships tanks!!

MARK

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Soda-Acid fire extinguisher refill phial contents used to be brown, (in the late 50s anyway).

Came across this whilst researching;

Cwmbran Chemical Co., Ltd. (P.C.).— Capital 50.000/., in
1/. shares. Objects: To carry on the business of vitriol and
chemical manufacturers, chemical agents and brokers, etc.,
to acquire all or part of the assets and liabilities of the branch
business of James Gibbs & Finch. Ltd., carried on at
Cwmbran, Mon., and to adopt an agreement with the said
company. Louisa. A. Gibbs. F. M. J. Gibbs. and Chance &
Hunt. Ltd. The first directors are E. J. Hunt, E. P. Chance,
and C. F. Chance.

THE CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST, July 1, 1911

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Oil of vitriol is Oleum....which is exciting stuff. A school I did TP in pipetted a winchester of it down a sink (with excess water) as they were not allowed it and the disposal costs were huge. I was not allowed to have it! It was like white syrup....and fumed in air.

All the acids I've dealt with have mostly been clear at strength, apart from nitric which is yellow or red when you get up the yee-haa end of things. Free NxOy of some sort probably.

I'm with legendrider on this - Vitriolic Acid is the old name for Sulphuric Acid (H2SO4). You can still find some references to Sulphuric Acid being known as as Brown Oil of Vitreol (BOV)

Maltabb just found the smoking gun! or should that be fuming gun :smartass:

MARK

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Merely by chance I am typing up the reminiscences of Roger Ridgeway, who worked at the fluorspar, barytes and lead processing plant at Glebe Mine, Eyam.

I quote: 'By the end of 1952 or early 1953 one of my first jobs at fifteen was to work under Ron White the new Chemist at the laboratory in the old Wests shoe factory next to the Rose and Crown Inn near Rock Square. One of my jobs was to test settling rates of tailings with different reagents. Lime was used at the time but was not entirely satisfactory and I tested such things as aluminium sulphate, alginic ester, starch etc. The lime bag store at Glebe was along the east wall of the old fitter’s shop near the tailings pump. My brother and I cleared it out when we reverted to Separan as the settling agent. For this the tailings required neutralising with sulphuric acid. There was a large cylindrical tank for the B.O.V. across the yard near the old barn and a pipe crossed the road above lorry height. B.O.V. is boiled oil of vitriol or concentrated sulphuric acid. Initially the B.O.V. came in carboys. Reagents were added to the centrifugal tailings pump sump'.

1872 Chemical manufacturers trade directory lists James Gibbs as a manufacturer of;

Sulphuric and Hydrochloric acids, and Sulphate of Soda at Cattedown;

Oil of Vitriol (sulphuric acid) in Bristol, and;

Oil of Vitriol in Cwmbran.

So it looks like a 'raw' version of sulphuric.

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https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JoQ-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA240&dq=vitriol+brown+acid&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-oOni18zJAhVF2xoKHZA1AvsQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=vitriol%20brown%20acid&f=false 

Lozz.