66 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



To give you an idea of the amount 

 derived from coke, there are thirteen 

 million tons of coal used in this country 

 every year for making coke, and you 

 could get 70,000,000 lbs. of sulphate 

 of ammonium from it, that makes twenty- 

 million dollars, and every pound of it is 

 lost. I hear there are ten or twelve coke 

 ovens being erected to save this sulphate 

 of ammonium, and, I believe in New York 

 State. The efforts made in Scotland to 

 utilize the ammonia from the Shale has 

 resulted in a saving of $220,000, and 

 they have only applied the method to 

 about half the works. 



Incidental to the manufacture of soap, 

 is the production of glycerin either by 

 alkali or by some other method which 

 we know as saponification. Now, as you 

 already are aware, most of the fats are 

 compounds of fatty acids with glycerin, 

 and the result of saponificaton is to form 

 a salt of the fatty acid or the acid itself, 

 and the glycerin separates. In early 

 times the production of soap was in the 

 form of soft soap or potash soap, this was 

 then mixed with salt, which had the 

 effect of increasing the density of the vat 

 and the soap at the same time was con- 

 verted from soft soap into hard soap. 

 The first Castile soap was made this 

 way by the French at Marseilles. As a 

 result of this work we get glycerin in 

 the liquids that underlie the hard soap as 

 it floats. If we mix fat with water and 

 make it very hot we can decompose it 

 into glycerin and fatty acid, the fatty 

 acid will separate, and give us glycerin 

 in the water while the fatty acid will 

 float upon it. The method with alkali 

 takes the glycerin into the alkaline solu- 

 tion, and for many years this glycerin 

 was wasted but is now saved. I suppose 

 you would be surprised to hear that in 

 1893 there were used for the manufacture 

 of dynamite for blasting in the United 

 States 8,000,000 lbs. of glycerin, and 

 there were 16,000,000 lbs. imported for 

 refining and for other uses. 



I have a list of the uses of glycerin and 

 I had no idea of the many things to which 

 it can be applied until I collated them. 

 It was used in gas meters at one time to 

 some extent, to keep them from freezing, 

 then it was used in the preservation of 

 skins, the production of leather gloves, 

 for vulcanizing India rubber, and all the 

 various uses in the pharmacy which are 

 familiar to you. The production of soap 

 led to the use of various oils and among 

 other things olive oil, and it was soon 

 noticed that the seeds of the cotton plant 

 gave an oil like that of the olive, but the 

 first method of taking the oil out of the 

 seeds was not a success. It was in 

 Nashua, Mississippi, and the first one 

 who introduced was Mr. Hamilton Cou- 

 per, who used a wedge press. That was 

 as long ago as 1834 that the idea was 

 conceived of getting cottonseed oil out of 

 the cotton seed. 



To give an idea of quantities — 15,000 

 tons of seeds will give you 15,000,000 

 lbs. of hulls and 10,000,000 lbs. of meal 

 and 4,600,000 lbs. of oil. The meal is 

 worth $88,000 ; the oil, $iS6,ooo ; the 

 lint, $18,000 ; and the total value of the 

 seeds, without taking into consideration 

 the 15,000,000 lbs. of hulls, is $293,353. 



At the beginning of my talk I was 

 speaking to you about phosphates in the 

 use of modern methods of agricultuie. 

 The production of Bessemer steel in the 

 United States was a matter of selection 

 of the best iron ores of the country, and 

 only those practically free from phos- 

 phorous could be used for the production 

 of steel. This was due to the method of 

 manufacture in using a certain lining in 

 the furnaces, the so-called silicious lin- 

 ing. A gentleman by the name of 

 Thomas, who was an enthusiastic student 

 of chemistry, used a basic lining made of 

 lime, and utilized all the iron ores. The 

 best iron ores, free from phosphorous 

 were only about one-tenth of all the iron 

 ores in the country, and only these could 

 be used for making steel. 



{To be Continued.) 



