438 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL VI. No. 1192 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Manufacture of Bulphuric Acid and Alkali 

 with the Collateral Branches. A Theoret- 

 ical and Practical Treatise. By George 

 Lunge, Ph.D. Fourth edition. Supplement 

 to Volume I. Sulphuric and Nitric Acid. 

 l^ew York, D. Van Nostrand Company. 

 191 Y. Pp. sii + 347. Price $5.00. 

 This Yolume represents rather a new idea in 

 bringing books up to date. The last edition of 

 Lunge's great treatise on sulfuric acid was 

 published in February, 1913. The great ad- 

 vances made along this line, as along almost 

 every line of chemical technology, in the past 

 four years have rendered no little material in 

 the book quite out of date. At the same time 

 a new edition of such a large and expensive 

 work seemed hardly called for. The author 

 and his publishers have found an excellent so- 

 lution of the problem with which they were 

 confronted by issuing this supplement. All the 

 new matter is printed consecutively with refer- 

 ence to the paging of the original, quite like a 

 volume of footnotes. While the book thus 

 necessarily lacks literary form, to the techno- 

 logical student it is unexpectedly readable, 

 furnishing, as it does, a complete review of the 

 progress of the acid industry for the past four 

 years. 



On looking through the book one is struck 

 with the immense amount of work that has 

 been done since the opening of the war, most 

 of it directly occasioned by the inexorable de- 

 mand for explosives. Sir William Crookes 

 little dreamed, when a few years ago he deliv- 

 ered his now classic address on the wheat 

 supply of the world, that he was making such 

 a world-wide war as the present possible. He 

 saw the peoples of the world rapidly becoming 

 wheat-eaters; the possible wheat lauds of the 

 world largely utilized ; the only possible source 

 of increased wheat supply a greatly increased 

 production per acre; this increased produc- 

 tion only attainable by greatly increased quan- 

 tities of nitrogen fertilizer; and the only im- 

 portant source of fertilizer, the Chile salt- 

 peter beds, facing exhaustion in a few decades. 

 The clear statement of the problem naturally 



set chemists at its solution, which of course 

 involved methods of utilizing the inexhaustible 

 supply of atmospheric nitrogen for the manu- 

 facture of nitric acid and ammonia. But ni- 

 trates are as indispensable for munitions of 

 war as for fertilizer. Ten years ago the other 

 nations would have been helpless at the hands 

 of Germany as soon as their first meager sup- 

 ply of explosives had been shot away, since 

 Germany had foreseen this shortage and long 

 ago " stocked up." On the other hand, had the 

 Chilean niter beds sufficed for the Allies until 

 Germany's supply was exhausted, she would 

 have been at their mercy. Thanks to the stim- 

 ulus of Sir William Crookes's address, as far 

 as explosives go, the war can continue indefi- 

 nitely, but after the war the farmer and the 

 wheat-eaters will come to their own, as Sir 

 William intended they should. 



The problem of combining atmospheric ni- 

 trogen had been commercially solved a few 

 years before the war opened. Lime, saltpeter 

 and nitric acid were being manufactured at 

 Notodden in Norway, and the Rjukanfos, with 

 its 250,000 horse-power, was largely ready for 

 utilization in 1913. Calcium cyanamid was 

 being made at half a dozen plants in different 

 countries, and from this ammonia was easily 

 obtained. The Haber process for combining 

 nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia was 

 probably being worked commercially in Ger- 

 many early in 1914, and processes for oxidiz- 

 ing ammonia into nitric acid were becoming 

 available. All of these and numerous lesser 

 processes sufficed to free Germany from de- 

 pendence on the Chile niter, and the Allies 

 have profited no less. 



Equally necessary for munitions is concen- 

 trated sulfuric acid, which indeed is demanded 

 in almost every chemical industry, and while 

 the advances in its manufacture have been less 

 striking than has been the case with nitric 

 acid, fully two thirds of the volume is taken 

 up with its progress. These developments have 

 been divided between improvements in the 

 contact process, and the old lead-chamber proc- 

 ess, and in the concentration of the chamber 

 acid. 



It will interest technologists to know that 



