THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF 

 NITRATE OF LIME 



BY JOHN B. C. KERSHAW, F.I.C. 



Since Sir William Crookes startled the scientific world, eight 

 years ago at Bristol, by pointing out that the corn supply of the 

 world was dependent upon the ample provision of nitrates to the 

 soil, and that we were rapidly depleting our reserves of the only 

 naturally occurring nitrate — namely, Chili saltpetre — scientists in 

 all countries have been attempting to solve the problem of the 

 extraction of nitrogen from the air in the form of nitrite or 

 nitrate. At the meeting of the Bristol Association at Bristol, 

 referred to above, Sir William Crookes pointed out that 

 experiments made in earlier years, by Lord Rayleigh and others, 

 had proved the possibility of burning the nitrogen of the air in 

 the electric arc, for production of nitrites and nitrates ; and 

 basing his estimate upon the results of these experiments, 

 Sir William Crookes stated that 14,000 Board of Trade units 

 of electricity, employed in this way, would yield the equivalent 

 of one ton of nitrate of soda. 



Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, F.R.S., another noted scientist, 

 in an address delivered before the Society of Chemical Industry 

 in 1901, referred to the problem and its great importance in the 

 following words : 



" The manufacture of nitrate of soda in this way is still 

 undeveloped industrially. The idea is -nevertheless alluring, for 

 surely chemical science and chemical industry can be put to no 

 higher or fitter use than to help to - increase the fertility of our 

 fields. Those immense sources of motive power, the waterfalls 

 of the world, which are now for the most part running to waste, 

 require some great employment such as- this, the production of 

 nitric acid. If the quantity of nitric acid produced per k.w. 

 hour can be increased yet a little further — and such a develop- 

 ment appears far from hopeless — this immense application of 

 electricity would become profitable. The subject is certainly 



worthy of the serious attention of chemists." 



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