THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



65 



of you have ever traveled over the rail- 

 road from Liverpool to Manchester, you 

 well know what a delectable spot it is. 

 This is due to the enormous quantities of 

 soda waste (which is practically a sul- 

 phide of lime) which is exposed to the 

 atmosphere and gives off sulphuretted 

 hydrogen without any cessation. 



Soda waste contains any where from 11 

 to 15 per cent, of sulphur and the total 

 waste in the Lancashire district is 750,- 

 000 tons, that is equal to 100,000 tons of 

 sulphur. It costs quite a little money to , 

 get rid of it, they not only require land 

 to dump it, but it costs them 25 to 36 

 cents per ton to put it there. There is 

 practically obtained about i x /i tons of the 

 dry waste for every ton of soda ash made, 

 and you can easily convert them into 

 tons if you are interested; they call it 

 waste because very little of it has been 

 utilized. In the European works if they 

 could remove the sulphur from the waste 

 they would produce 180,000 tons of sul- 

 phur per annum, and England could pro- 

 duce 60,000 tons, if they utilized it. 

 The utilization of this waste is becoming 

 quite a subject of interest. One process 

 consists in aerating it and turning the 

 sulphide into a hyposulphite of calcium, 

 and if you remember that hyposulphites 

 give sulphur as a precipitate when 

 treated with acids, you will understand 

 the operation of this process; they say 

 that about y$ of the sulphur in the waste 

 is thus saved. Another process consists 

 in treating the waste with air, then pass- 

 ing sulphurous acid into it; there are 

 14,000 tons of sulphur made this way, 

 but in practical operations the more re- 

 cent process still consists in turning part 

 of it into sulphuretted hydrogen and part 

 into sulphurous acid and making these 

 act upon one another and deposit sulphur 

 in that way. The sulphur recovered by 

 another method is very interesting; at 

 first sight it would appear that such a ma- 



terial as magnesium "chloride would not 

 act like an acid, yet if you treat soda 

 waste with it, you get sulphuretted hy- 

 drogen and chloride of calcium, and your 

 chloride of calcium is not lost but you 

 can utilize it in making magnesium 

 chloride again,- and then by acting upon 

 more waste get the sulphuretted hydro- 

 gen as in the first step of the process. 

 Now, the chief points are: 1st, the mag- 

 nesium chloride shall have a certain den- 

 sit}'; 2d, that the carbonic acid to de- 

 compose calcium^ chloride and magnesia 

 formed in the first step shall be under 

 pressure; and the third step is, that the 

 sulphuretted hydrogen produced shall be 

 kept unmixed with air, to aid in the 

 economy of space. This last process is 

 under trial, and bids fair to succeed. 



The Solway soda process is a success 

 only in the event of obtaining cheap 

 ammonia. The obtaining of ammonia 

 is an exceedingly important chemical 

 operation. 



As you all know sal ammoniac was 

 brought from the East in the early part 

 of the 1 6th century. There is not much 

 known about it, except that it was made 

 by the^Arabs ; a Jesuit priest believed it 

 was made in the delta of the Nile. 



There are several sources of ammonia 

 in which it is found in small quantities, 

 but there are also large quantities of the 

 materials produced. A ton of coal will give 

 about 70 lbs. of sulphate of ammonia, 

 this is contained in about 30 gallons of 

 gas liquor. Bones give 6 to 7 per 

 cent.; when they are distilled they will 

 give a liquor very much like that ob- 

 tained from gas- But Vinasse, the still- 

 bottoms from the beet alcohol, gives 

 from 1 to 4 per cent, of ammonium sul- 

 phate. As an idea of the amount of this 

 material available, if all the beet-sugar 

 works in Germany would send it where 

 it could be saved, it would yield 15,000 

 tons of ammonium sulphate per annum. 



