Hydrogen cyanide gas

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN), sometimes called prussic acid, is a chemical compound with the chemical formula HCN. It is a colorless, extremely poisonous and flammable liquid that boils slightly above room temperature, at 25.6 °C (78.1 °F). HCN is produced on an industrial scale and is a highly valuable precursor to many chemical compounds ranging from polymers to pharmaceuticals. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN), sometimes called prussic acid, is a chemical compound with the chemical formula HCN. It is a colorless, extremely poisonous and flammable liquid that boils slightly above room temperature, at 25.6 °C (78.1 °F). HCN is produced on an industrial scale and is a highly valuable precursor to many chemical compounds ranging from polymers to pharmaceuticals. Hydrogen cyanide is a linear molecule, with a triple bond between carbon and nitrogen. A minor tautomer of HCN is HNC, hydrogen isocyanide. Hydrogen cyanide is weakly acidic with a pKa of 9.2. It partially ionizes in water solution to give the cyanide anion, CN−. A solution of hydrogen cyanide in water, represented as HCN, is called hydrocyanic acid. The salts of the cyanide anion are known as cyanides. HCN has a faint bitter almond-like odor that some people are unable to detect owing to a recessive genetic trait. The volatile compound has been used as inhalation rodenticide and human poison, as well as for killing whales. Cyanide ions interfere with iron-containing respiratory enzymes. Hydrogen cyanide was first isolated from a blue pigment (Prussian blue) which had been known since 1706, but whose structure was unknown. It is now known to be a coordination polymer with a complex structure and an empirical formula of hydrated ferric ferrocyanide. In 1752, the French chemist Pierre Macquer made the important step of showing that Prussian blue could be converted to iron oxide plus a volatile component and that these could be used to reconstitute it. The new component was what is now known as hydrogen cyanide. Following Macquer's lead, it was first prepared from Prussian blue by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1782, and was eventually given the German name Blausäure (lit. 'Blue acid') because of its acidic nature in water and its derivation from Prussian blue. In English, it became known popularly as prussic acid. In 1787, the French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet showed that prussic acid did not contain oxygen, an important contribution to acid theory, which had hitherto postulated that acids must contain oxygen (hence the name of oxygen itself, which is derived from Greek elements that mean 'acid-former' and are likewise calqued into German as Sauerstoff). In 1811, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac prepared pure, liquified hydrogen cyanide. In 1815, Gay-Lussac deduced Prussic acid's chemical formula. The radical cyanide in hydrogen cyanide was given its name from cyan, not only an English word for a shade of blue but the Greek word for blue (Ancient Greek: κυανοῦς), again owing to its derivation from Prussian blue. Hydrogen cyanide forms in at least limited amounts from many combinations of hydrogen, carbon, and ammonia. Hydrogen cyanide is currently produced in great quantities by several processes, as well as being a recovered waste product from the manufacture of acrylonitrile. In 2006 between 500 million and 1 billion pounds were produced in the US. The most important process is the Andrussow oxidation invented by Leonid Andrussow at IG Farben in which methane and ammonia react in the presence of oxygen at about 1200 °C over a platinum catalyst: