8 THOMAS MACFAELANE 



In spite of enormous improvements here indicated in the soda industry as carried 

 on in England and Scotland, the following statement may be made to shew how much 

 material remains unrealised, or is still being wasted. 



Large heaps of the lixiviated pyrites residue, or "blue billy" as it is popularly called, 

 are now accumulating at the extraction works, because the iron works cannot absorb it 

 all. Why such a good iron oxide cannot be used, instead of sand, in which to mould pig 

 iron is not evident. It would certainly assist the puddling, as was proved by the EUers- 

 hausen process. Nor is it clear that it could not be converted into blooms by the Catalan 

 method, modified to suit circumstances, as was done for many a year on Lake Champlain. 

 In the extraction works, all the iron used in precipitating the copper and all the sulphate 

 of soda derived from the decomposition of the salt in the calcining furnaces, is lost. It 

 has been estimated that, during the year 1884, hydro-chloric acid was utilised for other 

 purposes than the making of bleaching powder, to the equivalent of 170,000 tons of salt, 

 leaving 408,8*74 tons for the manufacture of bleaching powder, but as the qviantity of bleach 

 produced was only 128,651 tons, it is evident that the acid from 87,247 tons of salt was 

 not utilised.' All the chlorine contained in the salt used for the production of carbonate 

 of soda by the Solvay or ammonia process, is allowed to pass away unutilised in the shape 

 of chloride of calcium. This is also the case with at least one-half of the chlorine in the 

 hydrochloric acid used in the manufacture of bleaching powder. " Tank waste" is still a 

 waste product, and one that is a chief contributor to the pollution of rivers. From the 

 weathering of the sulphide of calcium, large quantities of yellow liquors containing bisul- 

 phide of calcium find their way into the neighbouring streams. There they mingle with 

 the iron liquors from the copper extraction works, and no doubt cause the precipitation of 

 sulphide of iron, to which the inky blackness of the Clyde and Mersey seem attributable. 



Leaving the subject of w-aste saving in the matter of inorganic substances, it may be 

 profitable to refer to some instances of waste in the vegetable kingdom. 



Among the manufactures which have been successfully developed in Canada, one of 

 the most remarkable is that of wood pulp, for making paper, from spruce, poplar and bass- 

 wood. Bnt for this industry, many of these forest trees, which are not valued by our 

 lumbermen, would have gone to utter waste. So far as the production of ground wood 

 pulp is concerned, there is nothing to complain of on the score of waste. Nor can Ave find 

 anything to criticise in the process by which chemical wood pulp or wood cellulose is 

 produced. The soda which is the chief agent employed for removing the resinous and 

 other incrustiug substances from the woody fibre is almost completely recovered. 15 per 

 cent, of the soda used is all that is lost, chiefly in washing the pulp, some liquors from this 

 process being too w^eak to pay for concentration. The substances removed from the wood 

 and which form with the soda a dark brown lye, are all burnt up in the final stage of the 

 recovery process. It is quite possible that some of these may be of such a nature as to 

 deserve a better fate ; and I think it might be profitable to some of our chemists, were they 

 to devote some time to the examination of the residual alkaline liquor. The new sulphite 

 process practiced at many places in Grermauy, seems also to be worth the attention of our 

 chemists and mechanics. By the use of sulphur dioxide or bisulphite of calcium (instead 

 of soda) the disintegration of the woody fibre is effected, and a whiter and stronger pulp 



' Muspratt's Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 1886, v. 412. 



