THE ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



63 



in closed vessels, the same way that we 

 submit soft coal for making gas, and in 

 that manner he obtained a charcoal cor- 

 responding to the coke of the gas works, 

 a tar similar to coal tar but ot very little 

 value, and also some ammonia. The 

 beauty of this arrangement is that the 

 charcoal contains the whole of the iodine 

 and the sea- weed charcoal after leaching is 

 a good decolorizer. He then tried mace- 

 rating material of that kind called L,ami- 

 naria, found along the coasts in such 

 abundance, and he got the iodine in solu- 

 ble portion, and the insoluble portion he 

 used in making a substance that he called 

 Algin, a glue-like body having practi- 

 cal^ 7 all the properties of gelatin. Mr. 

 Stanford said: "100 tons of dry Lami- 

 naria burnt for kelp will give me 9 tons 

 of salts and 270 lbs. of iodine; if I char it 

 in a retort I get 15 tons of salts and 600 

 lbs. of iodine, or more than double that 

 from burning, and I get 36 tons of char- 

 coal, — at the same time I get some am- 

 monia. Now, by maceration from the 

 100 tons I get 68 tons of soluble, — the 

 water extract is 33 tons, giving salts 20 

 tons and iodine 600 lbs. and the Algin 

 and Angelose." 



So, to-day, by an improved method of 

 treatment, instead of being subjected to the 

 careless action of burning, the sea-weed 

 is treated either to destructive distillation 

 or maceration, and a scientific method 

 has been applied to these large growths 

 of sea-weed. But the application of 

 chemistry to the utilization of another 

 waste material threatens the sea-weed 

 industry of Scotland. I refer to the nitre 

 or nitrate of soda beds of Peru. Some 

 industrious chemist analyzed the nitrate 

 of soda as it occurs in the beds in Peru, 

 and found it contained sodium iodate, 

 and it required a good careful analysis to 

 detect it. He then found that if you 

 analyze the mother liquors after you 

 have obtained the nitrate of soda, which 



is already a commercial product, that 

 they contain 22 per cent, ot iodate of so- 

 dium — or, to put it in pounds, 3.8 lbs. to • 

 the ton of original raw material taken 

 out of the earth. That means about 1. 10 

 to 34. too per cent, on the commercial 

 nitrate of soda produced, and this would 

 give 2,800,000 lbs. of iodine. Now, the 

 amount of iodine used in the world is 

 about 600,000 lbs., of which France and 

 England produce about one-fifth; the rest 

 of it comes from Peru. 



The industry of burning sea- weed that 

 Mr. Stanford has given attention to, and 

 has made his life work alone, has benefit- 

 ed a large number of people living in 

 those rocky islands in the North of Eng- 

 land and Scotland. The Algin which I 

 mentioned as a new glue-like substance 

 is something of the character of gelatin ; 

 the principal difference is in the amount 

 of nitrogen it contains, otherwise they 

 appear to be practically the same sub- 

 stances. In the Algin the nitrogen is a 

 little less than 4 per cent , while in the 

 case of gelatin it is 17^ per cent. 



The search for alkali to produce soap 

 and glass, and I am still talking about 

 these raw materials (incidentall)' I spoke 

 of iodine), was kept up because the 

 materials they used were so expensive, 

 and such a material as wool was found 

 to contain certain potash salts. Here is 

 some raw wool; you get raw wool fat 

 from the fleece of the sheep ; you get 

 certain grades and ultimately the pure 

 wool fat that you know is lanolin. Now 

 one-third of the wool on a merino sheep 

 is a mixture of wool fat and a potash 

 soap, it is about one- seventh or 14 per 

 cent, of ordinary wool. A thousand 

 pounds of wool will give 140 to 180 lbs. 

 of this raw wool fat and potash soap ; 

 that means about 70 to 80 lbs- of car- 

 bonate of potash. There are 600,000,- 

 000 sheep used in the United States ; 

 they are worth $150,000,000 in the 



