244: 



CHEMICAL MANUEES. 



ammonia. The liquid used to cool the coil in the vat A, containing- 

 about 250 litres (55 gallons), is putrid urine, which thence passes into- 

 the cylinder C ancl C by a pipe not shown in the figure. The 

 boiler^ W contains the hot liquor not entirely exhausted from a 

 previous distillation which still contains a small proportion of NHg.. 

 The pipe T leads the steam into the vessel C ; m is a pipe which 

 dips a little above the bottom of the boiler whilst its other end passes, 

 outside the factory roof ; n is a safety pipe which indicates at the 

 same time (by the ascent of balls of froth) if the level of the liquid 

 has lowered to the end of the tube m ; o is a discharge pipe. The 

 vessels P and P' are to retain the abundant froth which would 

 otherwise contaminate the distillate. To ascertain the level of the 

 froth in the vessels P P', these are fitted at different heights with 

 three lateral apertures closed by wood on plugs, through which the 

 froth flows when the plugs are removed ; when the distillation which 



■piG. 48.— Figuera's Plant for Extraction of Ammonia from Urine. 



lasts about twelve hours is finished the boiler o is emptied and again 

 filled with the urine contained in C C. 



Utilization of Peat in the Manufacture of Ammoniacal Salts.— 

 Eor some years greater and greater efforts have been made to 

 utiHze peat in the manufacture of sulphate of ammonia. The 

 abundance of the raw material, its cheapness and the facility of its 

 extraction, and finally the unlimited outlet for commercial nitrogen 

 as manure, are all factors which are in favour of the use of peat.^ 



Numerous x^rocesses have been invented for the extraction of 

 nitrogen from peat. (1) In that of Van Heefien (1905) the pulver- 

 ized "substance washed with HCl, then with ordinary water until 



1 Deposits of peat are by no means so extensive as generally imagined. There 

 are few peat mosses that would keep a distilling plant of large capacity at 

 work for a couple of years. Peat company promoters would lead us to believe^ 

 that every bog was a peat moss and a mass of solid peat. — Tr. 



