THE ELECTRIC FURNACE IN CHEMISTRY. 419* 



By the side of them we may place other metals the minerals of 

 which are rare such as zirconium and vanadium. 



Vanadium, on which Prof. Roscoe has made some interesting 

 studies, was not known, except, as a gray powder including hydro- 

 gen, oxygen, and a little of some alkali metal as impurities ; but 

 Prof. Roscoe has had the pleasure of seeing in my little laboratory 

 at the Ecole de Pharmacie several hundred grains of it, under the 

 form of cast metal pieces, having a crystalline and brilliant frac- 

 ture. This simple body, the mineral of which occurs more exten- 

 sively than is generally supposed, is very difficult to melt, it hardly 

 liquefying in the current produced in the Edison dynamo by an 

 engine of forty horse power. 



In our studies of titanium, a mixture of charcoal and titanic 

 acid gave, with a machine of four horse power, protoxide of tita- 

 nium ; with a machine of forty-five horse power we obtained only 

 nitride of titanium ; under the action of currents of from one hun- 

 dred to three hundred horse power we prepared by kilogrammes 

 a crystallized carbide, and then real titanium, the properties of 

 which are wholly different from those formerly attributed to the 

 gray powders that bore that name. This substance takes fire in 

 fluorine; decomposes water only at a bright-red heat; and pos- 

 sesses the curious property of burning in nitrogen at a high 

 temperature, yielding the nitride of titanium studied by Friedel 

 and Gudrin. It readily combines with carbon and silicon, but 

 does not unite with argon. Its melting, point is very high, it 

 resembling carbon in that respect 1 . It differs from carbon, how- 

 ever, in the fact that while carbon under the ordinary pressure 

 and at a great elevation of temperature passes from a solid to a 

 gas without becoming liquid, titanium can, in the electric fur- 

 nace, be liquefied and then volatilized. 



Most of the simple bodies furnish, with carbon, well-defined 

 combinations, crystallized and stable, at a high temperature, which 

 are destined to furnish a new chapter to mineral chemistry. 



All these simple bodies which we have obtained by kilo- 

 grammes in the electric furnace form also borides and silicides 

 finely crystallized and so hard that some of them easily cut the 

 diamond. What part they are to have in the manufacture of steel, 

 and whether they are destined, like chromium, to give new prop- 

 erties to iron, are questions for the future to answer. But a new 

 chemistry of high temperatures is forming, from which industry 

 will most likely draw numerous applications. 



It is recognized on all sides that some of our industries are 

 about to suffer important modifications through the use of elec- 

 trical forces. We ask of the forces of Nature all they can yield ; 

 and they are capable of easy use when transformed into electricity. 

 Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature. ' 



