This is a paragraph from one of the Engines of Our Ingenuity that I have been enjoying.
www.uh.edu/engines/epi1.htm The author is a professor of engineering. So I was
surprised to find what seems to be a very obviously wrong choice of words.
"During the mid-1700s potash-making became an
American cottage industry. We used the burned-out
ashes from wood fires. We leeched them in big iron
kettles. Then we boiled the liquid and created a
potash distillate."

To me, the distillate is the water removed. What's left,the residue, is the potassium salts
and other solids. which I would call the product. I am genuinely surprised to see this author
make such a blunder. Any comments?

distilllate
n.
< L distillatus, pp. of distillare6
1 a product of distillation; liquid obtained by distilling
2 the essence of anything
Incidentally his "leech" I assume is typo for "leach".

Interesting question. I'd think that the distillate what was left after you separated the water out or, in the case of alcohol, separated it out from the water.

Just one. You are correct. The distillate is the condensed vapor that is boiled away during the distilling process.

since meaning 2 is the essence of anything, and the potash (from pot ash-- you started with ashes from the fire place) is a in a very week solution, you then evaporate the water, to leave behind the potasium, (in the form of a salt.)
a whole industry of salt and chemical came from wood ashes- some of it evolved from indian practices of making a mild acid solutions, to treat corn to make hominy, and the common practice of burning to both clear the land, and enrich the soil.

Sodium bi-carbonate (baking soda ) is an other by product of distilling leach water.

Salt, (that is sodium cloride) was being extracted from brine in mining/chemical industries all over the north (and one place in Kentucky) Cape Cod,MA, Watkins Glenn, NY, Midland MI, were (and still are to some degree)industrial centers as a result of the brine opperations, there were many other places, to numerous to name.
after the sodium cloride was removed, other salts would also evaporate out.

at first, the brine left over after common salt was removed was considered waste, but later, it was refined further.

What about the second meaning of distillate?

2 the essence of anything


Essence \Es"sence\, n. [F. essence, L. essentia, formed as if
fr. a p. pr. of esse to be. See {Is}, and cf. {Entity}.]
1. The constituent elementary notions which constitute a
complex notion, and must be enumerated to define it;
sometimes called the nominal essence.

2. The constituent quality or qualities which belong to any object, or class of objects, or on which they depend for
being what they are (distinguished as real essence); the real being, divested of all logical accidents; that quality which constitutes or marks the true nature of anything; distinctive character; hence, virtue or quality of a thing, separated from its grosser parts.

3. Constituent substance.

4. A being; esp., a purely spiritual being.

5. The predominant qualities or virtues of a plant or drug, extracted and refined from grosser matter; or, more strictly, the solution in spirits of wine of a volatile or essential oil; as, the essence of mint, and the like.

6. Perfume; odor; scent; or the volatile matter constituting perfume.


From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]

From the beginning, distillation was used to separate liquids that had different boiling points.
In the making of potash, you are evaporating, not distilling. So product would be an evaporate.
evaporate
vt.
L evaporatus, pp. of evaporare < e3, out, from + vaporare, to emit vapor < vapor, VAPOR6
1 to change (a liquid or solid) into vapor; drive out or draw off in the form of vapor
2 to remove moisture from (milk, vegetables, fruits, etc.) by heating or drying so as to get a concentrated product
3 a) to deposit (a metal, metallic salts, etc.) by evaporation b) to drive out (neutrons, electrons, etc.)
vi.
1 to become vapor; pass off in the form of vapor
2 to give off vapor
3 to disappear like vapor; vanish
e[vap#o[ra4tion
n.
e[vap$o[ra#tive
adj.
e[vap$o[ra#tor
n.

In that line above that I put in red, I took the liberty of changing a word that was simply
wrong. In chemistry, sublimation is the conversion of a solid to a vapor without going through
a liquid stage. Commonest example, in very cold weather icicles slowly decrease in size, even
though temperature remains far below freezing point.
So where my dictionary had "sublimation" I changed it to "evaporation."

My dictionary does not have it, but I found many geology sites that mentioned
halite (rock salt) as an evaporite along with other rocks formed by
evaporation.

I'd think that the distillate what was left after you separated the water out
Scientific jargon making its way back into everyday language, again. Much havoc is created that way.
The latin root of distil(l) actually stems from the drops of condensed vapor which fall into the receiving vessel. So distillate always refers to the component which is separated due to its (higher) volatility. The question of wether it was the useful component is secondary.

Sublimation is what happens to ice cubes if they sit in the freezer for too long without being used. One day, you go to get some ice, and the trays are empty!

...And you thought it was gnomes.

Sublimation works either way, solid to gas or gas to solid, according to AHD anyway. The important point is that the liquid phase is bypassed.

Dear Faldage: It would be nice of AHD had cited system in which gas goes directly to solid.
I'm prepared to believe it can happen, but I have never seen icicles grow.
Another example of sublimation that I remember involves crystals of iodine. I used to take
tincture of iodine, and add strong ammonia to it. Purple crystals of NI3 are fprmed. They
can be collected on a filter paper. They are harmless when wet, but when dry are violently
explosive. Trick was to spread wet crystals on floor. A few hours later anybody who stepped
on them got an alarming surprise. Janitor sweeping floor would get shell-shocked. The French
chemist who discovered the reaction lost a couple fingers learning about handling the product.
Would you call that a sublime explosion? Iodine crystals also sublimate slowly.

It would be nice of AHD had cited system in which gas goes directly to solid.

It's a dictionary, Dr. Bill, not a physics textbook.

Dear Faldage: amazing what can be found on Internet! I searched for "NI3" and got
a ten year old post by a guy who as a High School freshman made iodine from an old
chemistry book experiment adding KI to sulfuric acide. It gave off gaseous iodine, which
he collected on an ice filled Petri ;dish. That would be reversed sublimation. He then
made NI3, in an aluminum dish. It ate through the dish onto floor. He says he got a
surprise when he went into his (fortunately) isolated chemistry shack the next day.
I'll bet he did.

Gas goes directly to a solid when you compress and cool carbon dioxide. Just as the solid goes directly to a gas when you expose "dry ice" at room temperature. In the back of my mind is a recollecton that the liquid state of CO2 is only when one very particular temperature and pressure point is established, and it has to be within a tenth of a degree and a couple millibars of pressure.

Dear TEd: you bring back memories of my youth, seeing pharmacist make dry ice for
my father to use for removing warts. The pharmacist had a cylinder of the gas,
and put a piece of chamois leather over the nozzle, then when knob was turned,
the gas that escaped through the chamois removed enough heat from the gas
inside the chamois that solid CO2 was formed.

Well, that's not exactly the physics, Bill. All the chamois did was serve as a container for the dry ice.

I have a CO2 extinguisher, filled with highly compressed CO2. When I open the valve, the CO2 comes out and expands rapidly (hark back to our discussion about air conditioning some months ago.) There is only a certain amount of ambient energy in the gas (it was at room temperature under great pressure.) It expands and gets really REALLY cold (a couple hundred degrees below zero. The gas sublimates into a solid (dry ice) and begins to evaporate furiously.

The chamois contains the crystals of dry ice and insulates it a bit so the evaporation is controlled a little bit. What makes it feel cold is the rapid evaporation that's taking place.

TEd

Dear TEd: I had physics so long ago I am not equipped to debate the matter. But if
you just turned the nozzle, you would get only a few bits of solid. The chamois does
promote the production of the dry ice. Speaking of CO2 fire extinguishers, when I
was asst. director at Biological Lab, a safety inspector found all our CO2 extinguishers
empty. It took a bit of detective work to discover that a night watchman who had been
told to kill any mice that had escaped from cages had done so by turning CO2
fire extinguishers on them.

And did he yell "Freeze" at the poor miceys before he shot them, I wonder?

Dear Consuelo: I did a bit of freezing when my secretary got upset by finding a bat
in her office. I didn't want to hurt it, so I got a spray vial of ethyl chloride, which
used to be used to reduce pain from needles (not very effectively) and sprayed
the bat just enough to make him drop into a basin held under him. I think maybe
it acted as inhalation anaesthetic. But I took him outdoors, and in a few minutes
he flew off.

I took him outdoors, and in a few minutes
he flew off.
How humane, Darling. [kiss]