POWEK. 141 



great number of metallic alloys, such as ferromanganese, ferrochro- 

 niium, ferrotungsten, and others needed to give to steel the various 

 special properties demanded by its many applications, electric power 

 is essential, while for the production of iron and steel the use of 

 electricity is finding a growing application. Indeed, many " metal- 

 lurgists in active practice in the United States are convinced that the 

 time is rapidly approaching when all steel made will be passed 

 through the electric furnace to receive its final refining and its finish- 

 ing touches. We may safely look forw^ard to the establishment of 

 not only hundreds but possibly thousands of electric steel furnaces."^ 

 In the metallurgy of copper, zinc, and tin electricity is coming into 

 play, while in the refining of metals it is affording the means for 

 recovering many constituents formerly going to waste, in addition to 

 producing products of such purity as to open up new uses not pre- 

 viously enjoyed.- The United States is the greatest producer of 

 metals in the world, and proper electrical-power development will 

 give a great impetus to the advancement of the mineral industries. 



No problem is more fundamental to any country than the matter 

 of food supply, and electrochemistry has a very direct bearing in this 

 respect through its promise of lending assistance in producing fer- 

 tilizers. Of the three important fertilizing materials — nitrogen, 

 phosphorus, and potassium — nitrogen may be drawn from the atmos- 

 phere by the expenditure of electrical energy ; cheap electrical power 

 offers an immediate means for doing away with the cumbersome 

 method of converting phosphate rock into acid phosphate, with its 

 consequent burden upon transportation and upon sulphuric acid 

 manufacture;^ while the locked-up stores of potash held in unlimited 

 amount in widespread areas of silicate rocks must eventually be 



1 J. W. Richards, Electric furnace metallurgy, Proc. Second Pan American Scientific 

 Congress, vol. 7, 1917, p. 265. 



2 The United States Bureau of Mines has recently announced the perfection of an 

 electric smelting furnace that may be revolutionary in the making of brass. The use of 

 this furnace will replace costly crucibles of imported clay and graphite and reduce the 

 losses incidental to the older process by an amount estimated at $3,000,000 a year in 

 normal times and perhaps $10,000,000 a year In war times, besides contributing more 

 healthful working conditions. Such announcements are suggestive of the tremendous 

 latent possibilities in the field of electrometallurgy. 



3 The Bureau of Soils of the Department of Agriculture, in cooperation with the 

 R. B. Davis Co., of Hoboken, N. J., has recently conducted important experiments in this 

 field, with results published by J. N. Carothers in the Journal of Industrial and Engi- 

 neering Chemistry, Januai-y 8, 1918, and subsequently enlarged upon by W. H. Wagga- 

 man and C. R. Wagner in the May, 1918, issue of that journal. It is found that the 

 manufacture of pure phosphoric acid from high-grade phosphate rock at the mines 

 by means of an electric furnace comes to about $65 a ton of available phosphoric 

 acid, which is some $12 higher than the cost of an equivalent availability in the form 

 of acid phosphate as conventionally made by treating high-grade phosphate rock with 

 sulphuric acid. But by manufacturing phosphoric acid from mine-run phosphate rock, 

 thus eliminating part of the mining cost (and incidentally greatly enlarging the yield of a 

 deposit), and treating high-grade phosphate rock with the phosphoric acid so produced, 

 a double superphosphate is obtained containing three times as much phosphoric acid 

 as ordinary acid phosphate and at a cost of around $46 a ton of available phosphoric 

 acid. In the process the item of power amounts to roughly two-thirds of the total 



