NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY 



43 



Fig. 7. Tyssa : The Power Plant fob the Odde Cakbid and Ctanamid Woeks. 

 The water is brought down 1,450 feet in these two pipes, furnishing 22,000 horse- 

 power. 



carbid, when heated in an atmosphere of nitrogen, absorbed the latter 

 forming barium cyanid. But barium cyanid is expensive, so that the 

 same experiment was carried out on the cheaper calcium carbid, now an 

 article of commerce, in hope that calcium cyanid would be formed. 

 Nitrogen was indeed absorbed, but half the carbon of the carbid was 

 lost in the process, giving not calcium cyanid, but calcium cyanamid, 

 which contains for each atom of calcium two atoms of nitrogen but 

 only one of carbon. A study of this new substance revealed the fact 

 that when put in water it was decomposed and all its nitrogen given off 

 as ammonia. Now with the inadequate supply of ammonia from gas- 

 works and the decreasing supply of nitrate from Chili, the world has 

 been staring a fertilizer famine in the face, and every effort has 

 been made to devise some way of combining the nitrogen of the atmos- 

 phere for the use of growing crops. Here in this new discovery was a 

 possibility of manufacturing ammonia, needing for raw materials only 

 limestone, coal and air, all cheap, and an electric furnace. The last 

 could be only economically used when the electricity was furnished by 

 water. 



A few years ago a calcium carbid plant was established at Odda at 

 the head of the Sor-f jord, one of the most beautiful branches of the 

 Hardanger-fjord. To turn the carbid into cyanamid merely requires 

 heating in an atmosphere of nitrogen, and nitrogen composes four- 

 fifths of the air. But the problem of separating the oxygen and nitro- 

 gen of the air is by no means easy of solution on a large scale. Suffice 



