Evolution of dissilation theory as a basis for forming and development of the alcohol industry

The purpose of the article is to generalize the theoretical and methodological foundations of the establishment of the alcohol industry, which have formulated in the works of foreign and domestic scientists in the second half of the ХІХ – beginning of the ХХ centuries. It is proved that the forming of the alcohol industry was preceded by the development of the theory of distillation and fermentation. The characteristic of the first devices of the distillation action, which were most widely used in the production of alcohol of the period under study, is given. It is shown that in the XVII-XVIII century the methods of distillation were sufficiently developed, which made it possible to obtain alcohol for industrial production. Despite the fact that the chemical equation of alcoholic fermentation was discovered at the end of the XVIII – at the beginning of the ХІХ century, until the second half of the XIX century there was not science-based technology for the process of alcohol production. The main positions of the mechanistic, microbiological, physico-chemical, physiological theories of fermentation, which have formulated in the second half of the XIX century, have generalized. Zh.-B. Dumas, E. Peligo, M. Bertlo,A.M. Butlerov, A. Lavoisier, J. Lussac, S. Canarian de Latour, T. Schwann, F. Kuttsing, J. Libich, L. Paster, M.M.Manaseina, E. Buhner, L. A. Ivanov, A. I. Lebedev, S. P. Kostychev, Ya. O. Parnas, K. Neyberg, G. Embden, O. Meyerhof and others. The first study of methyl alcohol was conducted in 1834, the synthesis of methanol in 1857, tertiary alcohol – in 1863. The chemical equation of alcohol fermentation has given by French chemists at the end XVIII – the early XIX century.  The role of L. Pasteur, who in 1856 began to study the processes of fermentation and studied it for 20 years, has
proved. The scientist has shown that the formation of alcohol, glycerin and amber acid during fermentation can occur only in the presence of microorganisms. Russian physicist, biochemist M. M. Manaseina for the first time pointed out the possibility of cell-free alcohol fermentation. The author presents an important study by E. Bukhner, who advanced the hypothesis that the active substance is an enzyme. His discovery meant that fermentation occurs as the result of the chemical activity of the enzyme both inside and outside the yeast cell.