Water cooling with saltpetre
Enfriamiento del agua con salitre
- Date
- c. 1590 · confidence medium
- Place
- Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
- Credited to
- Mughal court of Akbar
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The Ain-i-Akbari describes cooling jugs of water or wine by turning them in a bath of water with saltpetre, whose dissolution absorbs heat. It was used daily at court and is one of the earliest documented chemical cooling methods.
The Spanish physician Blas Villafranca published the same method in Rome in 1550, so priority is not Indian; the scale of use at the Mughal court is nonetheless notable.
What it led to
- freezing mixtures
- understanding of endothermic dissolution