190 



ELASTIC BITUMEN 



facturo of the finest candles, either alone or in admixture with the stearino of the 

 cocoa-nut oil. 



Palm-oil often requires to be bleached for its various uses, and there are several 

 processes used to effect it, viz. chlorine, powerful acids, and the combined influence of 

 air, heat, and light. 



M. Bohl has bleached palm-oil by heating it quickly to 464 F., and keeping it at 

 that temperature for a few minutes, without the aid of light or air. And ho says this 

 process has been carried on for some time in a factory. The heating of the palm-oil 

 is effected as rapidly as possible in cast-iron pans ; it is kept for ten minutes at tho 

 temperature of 464 F., and the bleaching is complete. Ten or twelve hundred- 

 weight of palm-oil may be conveniently heated in one pan, which, however, must only 

 be two-thirds full, as the oil expands greatly by the heat. It must be covered with a 

 well-fitted cover, which prevents inconvenience from the disagreeable vapours which 

 arise. This answers better on the large scale than on the small. By this process it 

 acquires an empyreumatic odour, which disappears after a little time, and the original 

 odour of the palm-oil returns. 



The yellow fat which is used to grease the axle-trees of the railway carriages is 

 prepared with a mixture of palm-oil and tallow, with which is mixed a little soda-lye. 

 (Gerhardt.) 



For the properties of palmitin and palmitic acid, see PALMITIC ACID. 



Of palm-oil our Imports have been : 



EIiCEOXTCETER. A variety of hydrometer which is sometimes used for detecting 

 adulterations in fixed oils by their specific gravity, and by their different rates of 

 expansion by heat. The determinations by this instrument are not, however, to be 

 strictly relied on. 



ELAINE (called also OLEINE) is the name given by Chovreultothothinoil, which 

 may be expelled from tallow and other fats, solid or fluid, by pressure either in their 

 natural state or after being saponified, so as to harden the stearine. It may bo extracted 

 also by digesting the fat in seven or eight times its weight of boiling alcohol, specific 

 gravity 0*798, till it dissolves tho whole. Upon cooling tho solution tho stearino falls 

 to the bottom, while the elaine collects in a layer, like olive-oil, upon tho surface of 

 the supernatant solution, reduced by evaporation to one-eighth of its bulk. If this 

 elaine be now exposed to a cold temperature, it will deposit its remaining stearine, 

 and become pure. Braconnot obtained it by exposing olive-oil to a temperature of 

 about 21 F. in order to cause the congelation of tho margarine or stearine (?). The 

 elaine was a greenish -yellow liquid ; at 14 F. it deposited a little margarine. Seo 

 OILS and STEARINE. 



ELASTIC BANDS. (Tissii8 elasttqucs, Fr. ; Fcdcrharz-zcigc, Ger.) See 

 CAOUTCHOUC and BRAIDING MACHINK. 



ELASTIC BITUMEN, called also mineral caoutchouc and clateritc, was first 

 observed in Derbyshire, in tho forsaken lead-mine of Odin, by Dr. Lister, in 1673, who 

 called it a subterranean fungus. It was afterwards described by Hatchett. Tho 

 analysis of this variety, by Johnston, gave the following as its composition: 



Carbon 85-47 .' .... Hydrogen 13 "28, 



