NOYES: NITROGEN PROBLEM IN RELATION TO WAR 391 



because of the large power requirement, but power is not avail- 

 able that we can afford to devote to the process. There is a 

 great scarcity of power in the eastern sections of the country 

 even for the very necessary industries, and while there may be 

 certain cheap powers on the Pacific coast, we have no ammonia 

 there, as coke is not being produced; and we cannot therefore 

 carry out the arc process in the Far West because we would not 

 be able to ship the product in solid form. The arc process in 

 its present form, therefore, does not look promising for use in 

 this emergency; but if it could be perfected by a 50 per cent 

 reduction in the power requirement, it would at once become 

 an extremely valuable process. The arc process, I may add, is 

 available in this country, all details being well known, so that if 

 it were not for this power difficulty it could easily be installed. 



There is also developing in this country, as a result of the 

 investigations of Prof. J. E. Bucher, of Brown University, the 

 cyanide process, which I have already described. The chemical 

 reaction involved in it was well known, and the use of iron as a 

 catalyzer had also been discovered; but the first attempt to put 

 the process on a commercial basis was made by the Nitrogen 

 Products Company, which has built a small cyanide plant near 

 the Mathieson Alkali Works, at Saltville, Virginia, where nitro- 

 gen is available from the ammonia-soda process. The Govern- 

 ment is also building a plant to operate this process under the 

 rights which the Company has given to it. The Bureau of Mines 

 is constructing this plant, which will produce 15 tons of sodium 

 cyanide per day. Sodium cyanide itself is important; in fact, it 

 is so valuable that it will not pay to convert it into ammonia 

 until the market for cyanide has been satisfied; and it is also of 

 some use in poison-gas work. Still, the use of cyanide is limited 

 in gas warfare, and the demand for this purpose is not great. 



Another company, the Air Reduction Company, has also 

 worked out a cyanide process on a similar principle, and is pre- 

 pared to make cyanide on a commercial scale. 



Although this process has been put on a semi-industrial basis 

 for the production of cyanide, the next step in it — the steaming of 

 the cyanide for the production of ammonia — is still in the experi- 



