RUBBER 667 



improved in several respects, and experiments will be 

 carried out shortly to test the increased efficiency by: 

 (i) Enclosing the greater part of the belts in long boxes 

 with hinged doors; (2) use of an exhaust or forced 

 draught fan; (3) graduation of the holes in the perforated 

 smoke-pipe, since with large holes of the same size the 

 smoke escapes through the first few and only acts on a 

 short portion of the belt; a fan would also improve the 

 apparatus in this respect. On a large scale some forty 

 or fifty belts could be run by means of a small engine 

 running at low speed and geared very low. 



Wickham's Process. Wickham's process, advocated 

 for several years by the inventor and recently taken up 

 by a company for working on a commercial scale, is very 

 similar to Derry's in principle, except that the latex is 

 spread over the interior surface of a hollow drum into 

 which smoke from a furnace is passed. 



In both the Derry and Wickham processes, unless some 

 means is adopted to prevent natural coagulation, such 

 as the addition of formalin to the latex, a considerable 

 amount of naturally coagulated lump is formed unless a 

 sufficient number of belts is available to treat each day's 

 yield of latex in two or three hours. 



The Byrne Process. The Byrne process, which has 

 been boomed considerably during the last year, and is 

 being adopted recently on a number of estates in Malaya, 

 differs from the preceding two in that it is not a process 

 for coagulating latex direct (N.B. It could be adopted 

 for this purpose, vide next process), but a more rapid 

 and possibly constant method of smoking rubber coagu- 

 lated by acetic acid or other coagulants in the ordinary 

 way. The rubber in the form of crepe or sheet is hung 

 on racks in a single-story smoke chamber, the walls and 

 roof of which are covered with " malthoid " or similar 

 material. The process consists in dropping at equal or 

 any desired rates two fluids, known as Amazonian No. I 

 and No. 2, on to a hot plate, which forms the bottom 

 of an oven in the machine constructed and sold on behalf 

 of the inventor; the plate is heated by means of a blast 

 kerosene oil lamp, charged from a reservoir attached to 

 the machine. The two liquids, which consist essentially 



