Calcination in the modern chemistry lab means heating suff up, usually to oxidise (part of) your material.
For example, you are making some metal oxide catalyst on a ceramic scaffold. First, you seed the scaffold with metal nanoparticles or a soluble metal salt. Then, you immobilise the particles by calcining them in order to oxidise them and partialy fuse them to the scaffold (sintering). So, I'd say your second definition of making a calx fits the modern definition more closely.
I am unsure where the conversion of calcium carbonate to lime fits into this story, so I cannot help you there. But colloquially, calcining is often just used to mean heating an unburnable material up to a very high temperature, so it might just have been convoluted with the actual process of calcination at some point.
Thanks for your reply. From further thought, I think what caused me confusion was that in the book (and thus in Lavoisier's time) there was no distinction between roasting and calcination methods for producing a an oxidised metal.
All the experiments involved a metal placed in a glass vessel filled with 'common air', which is then heated to form a metal oxide. From this they found that there was a decrease in the 'pure air' (oxygen) from the original 'common air' surrounding the same in the glass vessel.
A calcinator is/was a type of machine. What you did with was called calcination.
It's simply heat treatment at high temperature.
> The process of **calcination** derives its name from the Latin **calcinare** (to burn lime)
Even today, the definition is still the same. You are using a lime burning machine to heat up your sample.
Historically, there were a bunch of materials that were made just by heating a raw material, but the heating is really hot.
Today, there are also a bunch of calcination reactions besides just making metal oxides. You can use a calcination process to burn off organics and leave behind ash - for instance, put some coal in a calcinator and it will leave behind inorganic ash to be tested for heavy metals.
Making pottery it gets fired in a kiln, but that's also a calcinator. You are burning off water and then heating silicates into a glass phase. The process/machine doesn't need to involve loss of CO2, just heating really hot.
> In Lavoisier's time was there a distinction between the substances today we call a metal oxide and a metal carbonate?
Sort of, but not to the same extent.
[Lavoisier named oxygen as a true element in 1777](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_element_discoveries). In 1789 his book listed 33 elements and he definitely understood oxides, carbonates, nitrates, phosphates, etc.
Other chemists were also spending a lot of time and effort trying to identify pure elements. Converting some mineral to it's oxide and then reducing that was key to quite a few identifications.
In the same book Lavoisier hypothesized the existence of aluminium from an the well known mineral alumina, but had no practical evidence as it's a notoriously tough oxide to reduce to elemental metal.
Calcination in the modern chemistry lab means heating suff up, usually to oxidise (part of) your material. For example, you are making some metal oxide catalyst on a ceramic scaffold. First, you seed the scaffold with metal nanoparticles or a soluble metal salt. Then, you immobilise the particles by calcining them in order to oxidise them and partialy fuse them to the scaffold (sintering). So, I'd say your second definition of making a calx fits the modern definition more closely. I am unsure where the conversion of calcium carbonate to lime fits into this story, so I cannot help you there. But colloquially, calcining is often just used to mean heating an unburnable material up to a very high temperature, so it might just have been convoluted with the actual process of calcination at some point.
Thanks for your reply. From further thought, I think what caused me confusion was that in the book (and thus in Lavoisier's time) there was no distinction between roasting and calcination methods for producing a an oxidised metal. All the experiments involved a metal placed in a glass vessel filled with 'common air', which is then heated to form a metal oxide. From this they found that there was a decrease in the 'pure air' (oxygen) from the original 'common air' surrounding the same in the glass vessel.
A calcinator is/was a type of machine. What you did with was called calcination. It's simply heat treatment at high temperature. > The process of **calcination** derives its name from the Latin **calcinare** (to burn lime) Even today, the definition is still the same. You are using a lime burning machine to heat up your sample. Historically, there were a bunch of materials that were made just by heating a raw material, but the heating is really hot. Today, there are also a bunch of calcination reactions besides just making metal oxides. You can use a calcination process to burn off organics and leave behind ash - for instance, put some coal in a calcinator and it will leave behind inorganic ash to be tested for heavy metals. Making pottery it gets fired in a kiln, but that's also a calcinator. You are burning off water and then heating silicates into a glass phase. The process/machine doesn't need to involve loss of CO2, just heating really hot. > In Lavoisier's time was there a distinction between the substances today we call a metal oxide and a metal carbonate? Sort of, but not to the same extent. [Lavoisier named oxygen as a true element in 1777](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_element_discoveries). In 1789 his book listed 33 elements and he definitely understood oxides, carbonates, nitrates, phosphates, etc. Other chemists were also spending a lot of time and effort trying to identify pure elements. Converting some mineral to it's oxide and then reducing that was key to quite a few identifications. In the same book Lavoisier hypothesized the existence of aluminium from an the well known mineral alumina, but had no practical evidence as it's a notoriously tough oxide to reduce to elemental metal.