ethyl cyanide

Propionitrile, also known as ethyl cyanide and propanenitrile, is an organic compound with the formula CHCHCN.

Frankland and Kolbe together investigated the reaction of ethyl cyanide and zinc in 1849 reporting the isolation of not the ethyl radical but the methyl radical (CH) which in fact was ethane.

During the period 1847-1849, in an effort to vindicate the radical theory of organic chemistry, Hermann Kolbe and Edward Frankland produced ethane by the reductions of propionitrile (ethyl cyanide) and ethyl iodide with potassium metal, and, as did Faraday, by the electrolysis of aqueous acetates.