■^ 



658 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



loss, it will be readily understood that not many cents per ton of ore 

 smelted can be added for special fume treatment unless the product 

 so recovered can be made to pay part of this cost. 



Nor, aside from the cost, would it be easy even to throw away such 

 an amount of acid without doing damage to the surrounding country 

 by its getting into the drainage. The total production of sulphuric 

 acid in the United States at present is about 2,500,000 tons per year, 

 of which probably over half goes into fertilizer manufacture, the 

 most important other consumers being the explosive factories, oil 

 refineries, the steel mills, and miscellaneous heavy chemical factories. 

 Over half of the total amount of acid is manufactured from the 

 sulphur of pyrites imported into this country chiefly from Spain. 

 The low Avater freight from there to our eastern and southern sea- 

 board, where both the raw phosphate and the fertilizer markets 

 already exist, makes this cheaper than to manufacture the acid from 

 waste gases of our western smelters and then paj' freight on the 

 finished product. 



The discovery in Idaho and JSIontana, within the last few years, of 

 what are probably the most extensive phosphate-rock beds yet found 

 the world over,^ is likely to have a very important bearing on the 

 problem in the future ; but even so, the freight rates on the finished 

 fertilizer to the southern and eastern markets are still practically 

 prohibitive, and the demand for fertilizer on our virgin soils of the 

 West is developing verj^ slowly. A few days' output of the sulphur 

 from a single one of our large western smelters would supply suffi- 

 cient acid for the present yearly fertilizer demands of the whole 

 Pacific coast. However, the consumption of fertilizer in the West 

 has more than tripled in the past five 3^ears, and eventually this will 

 undoubtedly come to be a factor in the case. 



Besides the manufacture of sulphuric acid there are a few uses for 

 sulphur dioxide itself, the largest consumption being in the Avood 

 pulp and paper industry, where it is used as a disintegrating and 

 bleaching agent. It is also used as a disinfectant and preservative, 

 and, to a small extent, in refrigerating machinery, but the tonnage 

 represented by the latter application is comparatively small and 

 does not seem to promise great enlargement; still these uses should 

 not be overlooked as possibilities of disposal of part of the material 

 to be handled. In the case of the wood-pulp industry, we are again 

 met by a new complication. The spent liquors from these mills have 



1 Phosphates : Preliminary report on the Phosphate Deposits in Southeastern Idaho and 

 Adjacent Parts of Wyoming and Utah, by H. S. Gale and R. W. Richards, V. S. GeologicaJ 

 Survey Bull. No. 430, 1910, pp. 457-535. 



Phosphates iu Idaho and Montana, by A. R. Schultz, K. W. Richards, and .T. T. I'ardee, 

 U. S. Geological Survey Bull. No. 530-H, 1912. 



Fertilizer Resources of the United States, by Frank K. Cameron — Message from the 

 President of the United States transmitting a letter from tho Secretary of Agriculture, 

 together with a Preliminary Report by the Bureau of Soils on the Fertilizer Resources of 

 the United States — Senate Document No. 190, 2d sess. G2d Cong. 



