History of ethanol

         Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile,flammable, colorless liquid with the structural formula CH3CH2OH, often abbreviated as C2H6O. A psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs known, ethanol produces a state known as alcohol intoxication when consumed. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a solvent, and as a fuel. In common usage, it is often referred to simply as alcohol or spirits.


64-17-5，C3CH2OH

　　The term "alcohol" now refers to a wider class of substances in chemistry nomenclature, but in common parlance it remains the name of ethanol. Ultimately a medieval loan from Arabic al-kuḥl,use of alcohol in this sense is modern, introduced in the mid 18th century. Before that time, Middle Latin alcohol referred to "powdered ore of antimony; powdered cosmetic", by the later 17th century "any sublimated substance; distilled spirit" use for "the spirit of wine" (shortened from a full expression alcohol of wine) recorded 1753. The systematic use in chemistry dates to 1850.
　　The fermentation of sugar into ethanol is one of the earliest biotechnologies employed by humans. The intoxicating effects of ethanol consumption have been known since ancient times. Ethanol has been used by humans since prehistory as the intoxicating ingredient of alcoholic beverages. Dried residue on 9,000-year-old pottery found in China imply that Neolithic people consumed alcoholic beverages.
　　Although distillation was well known by the early Greeks and Arabs, the first recorded production of alcohol from distilled wine was by the School of Salerno alchemists in the 12th century.The first to mention absolute alcohol, in contrast with alcohol-water mixtures, was Raymond Lull.
　　In 1796, Johann Tobias Lowitz obtained pure ethanol by mixing partially purified ethanol (the alcohol-water azeotrope) with an excess of anhydrous alkali and then distilling the mixture over low heat.Antoine Lavoisier described ethanol as a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and in 1807 Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure determined ethanol's chemical formula.Fifty years later, Archibald Scott Couper published the structural formula of ethanol. It was one of the first structural formulas determined.
　　Ethanol was first prepared synthetically in 1825 by Michael Faraday. He found that sulfuric acid could absorb large volumes of coal gas.He gave the resulting solution to Henry Hennell, a British chemist, who found in 1826 that it contained "sulphovinic acid" (ethyl hydrogen sulfate).In 1828, Hennell and the French chemist Georges-Simon Sérullas independently discovered that sulphovinic acid could be decomposed into ethanol.Thus, in 1825 Faraday had unwittingly discovered that ethanol could be produced from ethylene (a component of coal gas) by acid-catalyzed hydration, a process similar to current industrial ethanol synthesis.
　　Ethanol was used as lamp fuel in the United States as early as 1840, but a tax levied on industrial alcohol during the Civil Warmade this use uneconomical. The tax was repealed in 1906.Use as an automotive fuel dates back to 1908, with the Ford Model T able to run on gasoline or ethanol.It remains a common fuel for spirit lamps.
　　Ethanol intended for industrial use is often produced from ethylene.Ethanol has widespread use as a solvent of substances intended for human contact or consumption, including scents, flavorings, colorings, and medicines. In chemistry, it is both a solvent and a feedstock for the synthesis of other products. It has a long history as a fuel for heat and light, and more recently as a fuel forinternal combustion engines.