SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
Boiler Chemistry and Feed Water Supplies, by J. H. Paul, B.Se., F.1.C., 
London, Longmans Green & Co., 1919. In the preface to this book the author 
states that boiler chemistry has not received the attention it merits. A more 
or less perfunctory analysis of feed water, made with a view of dealing with 
the scale-forming constituents, is all that has hitherto been generally considered 
necessary for boiler work. Little or no investigation has been made, of the 
innumerable reactions that take place when natural waters are heated to some 
400 deg. I. under a pressure of fifteen to twenty atmospheres. Under these 
conditions new combinations are brought about and unthought-of reactions take 
place. A modern boiler is not merely a basin in which liquid water is con- 
verted into gas, but a receptacle for the mineral contained, in greater or less 
quantities, in all natural waters even when softened. The boiler is in reality 
an autoclave in which chemical solutions are concentrated and partially 
evaporated at high temperatures and pressures, and should be looked upon as 
a chemical factory in which various chemicals are produced during the conver- 
sion of ordinary water from an initial temperature of, say, 60 deg. F. into 
steam often highly superheated. Some of these reactions affect the steaming 
capacity of the boiler, and others affect the metal of which it is constructed, 
If these reactions are not properly understood and properly controlled, much 
damage may be done to the metal itself, even if that damage be not sufficient to 
cause explosion or render the boiler useless for steam-raising purposes. An 
account is given in the book of some of these reactions, and attention is. called 
to the conspicuous part played by carbonic acid in boiler chemistry. 
Chemistry has improved the physical character of industrial iron and steel, 
and rendered possible the use of the high pressures now employed in steam 
boilers, and an acquaintance with the reactions which take place in a boiler 
under modern working conditions will enable steam users to preserve their 
boilers from those evils which are roughly summed up in the expression “scale 
and corrosion.” 
Many of the chemical reactions described in the book have been gathered 
from a long practical experience with high-pressure boilers working under varied 
circumstances and conditions, and the analyses given in the text are original 
analyses made by the author in the course of a somewhat extended practice. 
- So far as possible, technical language and expressions have been avoided. 
The facts stated and the conclusions drawn are described in the language of 
every-day life, so that those without more than a very limited acquaintance with 
chemistry may be able to understand and appreciate the results, and a chapter 
has been added explaining and illustrating such technical expressions as it has 
been found necessary to use. 
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