666 



NATURE 



[February 19, 1920 1 



the reader's irritation with the book, which, in 

 spite of its too obvious faults, has many excellent 

 qualities, by leaving: the pages uncut and un- 

 trimmed — surely an unreasonable offence in a book 

 of this character. 



A NEW COPPER-REFINING INDUSTRY 

 IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



IN the last year of the eighteenth century Great 

 Britain produced about 75 per cent, of the 

 world's output of copper. The Cornish miners 

 supplied most of the ore, and the Swansea 

 smelters extracted and refined the metal. In the 

 United States of America only a few tons were 

 made. In 1913 the positions were reversed. 

 Great Britain smelted and refined barely 6 per 

 cent, of the world's production of this metal, and 

 all but an insignificant fraction was derived from 

 imported ores, matte, bfister copper, and precipi- 

 tate or cement copper. In the same year the 

 United States of .America furnished more than 55 

 per cent, of the world's total, and by far the 

 greater part of this . was obtained from home 

 supplies of ore. 



Whether in peace or war, copper is, and has 

 long been, second in importance only to iron, not 

 only in the various types of the commercial metal, 

 but also in its numerous alloys. The enormously 

 greater extent to which it is now used is not, 

 however, generally realised. In 1800 the world's 

 production did not exceed 10,000 tons, and that 

 was probably the high-water mark of the annual 

 production up to that time ; in 1900 it had risen to 

 about 500,000 tons, and in 1912 to about 

 1,000,000 tons. Thus, in little more than a hundred 

 years, the production had increased a hundredfold. 



During the war the whole question of the future 

 of the copper-smelting and refining industries of 

 this country was examined and considered by the 

 Non-Ferrous Metal Trades Committee of the 

 Board of Trade under the chairmanship of Sir 

 Gerard Muntz. In due course the Committee re- 

 ported, but the report has not been published. 

 The announcement is now made in a recent issue 

 of the Times that a syndicate has been formed to 

 set up a large copper refinery in Devonshire,- and 

 has chosen a site near Newton Abbot, and that 

 it is proposed to spend nearly 10,000, oooZ. on the 

 scheme. The chairman of the syndicate is Sir 

 Gerard Muntz. It is stated that Mr. H. J. Wilson, 

 who originated the scheme, at first intended to 

 harness and utilise the water-power of the Dart- 

 moor plateau, but so much opposition was shown 

 in some quarters that this proposal has been aban- 

 doned, at any rate for the time being. It has 

 been decided to utilise a large deposit of lignite, 

 of which it is estimated that more than 

 800,000,000 tons are available for the generation 

 of the electric power required. At the site chosen 

 there are tide-water facilities. By-products will 

 be collected and marketed. The power generated 

 will be mainly devoted to the electrolytic refining 

 of copper, but it is considered that it will be so 

 cheap as to enable current to be supplied in 

 bulk to all the towns in South Devon, as well as 

 NO. 2625, VOL. 104] 



to the industries which may be attracted to the 

 neighbourhood. 



The lignite deposits have only been used locally 

 to a small extent. The Times states that a few 

 months before the outbreak of war a party of 

 Germans conducted a series of experiments and 

 acquired a considerable tract with the evident in- 

 tention of developing it on a large scale. 



In the years immediately preceding the 

 war the United States of America refined 

 electrolytically more than 90 per cent, of 

 the world's output of crude copper. Most 

 of this production was absorbed by the electrical 

 industry. Great Britain, accordingly, was obliged 

 to obtain the bulk of this type of copper from 

 .America, and in 1913 imported about 100,000 

 tons. In view of the great importance of the home 

 electrical industry, it will be obvious- that the 

 proposal to establish a large electrolytic refinery 

 in a suitable locality possesses value which it is 

 not easy to exaggerate. It should be pointed out, 

 however, that the refinery will have to depend 

 mainly upon imported blister copper for its raw 

 material, since only a small amount of this metal 

 is smelted in Great Britain at the present time. 

 There are no longer any considerable home de- 

 posits of copper ore, and the few smelters who 

 do exist have found it more and more difficult to 

 obtain smelting materials. The United States of 

 America, by virtue of the extent of its control of its! 

 own deposits and of those in Chile, is able largely 

 to influence the price of copper, and the policy 

 pursued by the works there is to attract smelting 

 materials from other countries for treatment, l he 

 Americans can afford to pay high prices for im- 

 ported ores, because the remainder of this raw 

 material is produced at home at a price which is 

 so low that a low average selling price for the 

 whole serves to secure an adequate profit. In 

 Great Britain only a few copper manufactaring 

 firms and one or two companies owning mines 

 abroad can afford to operate smelting works under 

 these conditions. This consideration has no doubt 

 been given its due weight by the syndicate, but it 

 has not been made clear upon what sources they 

 will rely for their blister copper. 



In conclusion it must be stated that in this country 

 a small amount of electrolytic refining is carried 

 on, and that there are a large number of manufac- 

 turers who are engaged in the furnace-refining of 

 blister, Bessemer, and other varieties of the crude 

 metallic copper, and in producing the " tough " and 

 " best selected " brands of the metal. The " tough " 

 quality is used chiefly by the engineering and ship- 

 building industries, and the "best selected" for 

 the manufacture of alloys. In the production of 

 this class of material the works in Great Britain 

 are, and have long been, pre-eminent. If, there- 

 fore, the plans of the syndicate are successful in 

 providing British manufacturers with sufficient 

 supplies of electrolytically refined metal for their 

 purpose, the production of this commodity in Great 

 Britain will be placed on a much more satisfactory 

 footing than it has been for many years. 



H. C. H. Carpenter. 



