SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
EE 
at about $d. per unit in pre-war times; and to-day the cost is stated 
to be only two-fifths of a penny. 
_ The Stickstoffdunger Fabrik, which manufactures carbide and 
cyanamide at Knapsack, in the brown-coal area, formerly produced 
power at slightly less than one-tenth of a penny per unit in its own 
power station, but recent increased labour and material charges have 
raised this cost to the still very low figure of less than three-tenths of 
a penny per unit. It is not to be wondered at that the development of 
electrical furnace work and electrolytic processes has been great, and it 
is difficult to see how competition with these is to be met unless the 
projected central power schemes proposed for this country can dis- 
tribute power at equally low rates. 
I have already commented upon the great amalgamation of interests 
which enabled both internal and external competition to be stifled so 
effectively. This rapprochement has had the eftect of bringing firms of 
very diverse interests into extremely close working touch with each 
other, and it may not be without interest to quote some examples of this 
in German works. As is well known, a process for the synthetic manu- 
facture of acetone was worked out in this country which involved three 
catalytic operations, viz., the production of acetaldehyde from alcohol, 
the oxidation of this aldehyde to acetic acid, and the subsequent con- 
version of the acetic acid into acetone. In the similar process worked 
in Canada, the first stage was the preparation of acetaldehyde from 
acetylene. 
A pressing demand in Germany for acetic acid led to the establish- 
ment of a similar process at the Farbwerke Héchst, the acetylene being 
prepared from calcium carbide supplied by the Stickstoffdunger Fabrik 
at Knapsack. It was apparently early appreciated that it would be 
highly economical to carry out this process in close proximity to the 
Knapsack works, since the carbide could then be obtained on the spot, 
and, further, the oxygen required for the oxidation could be obtained 
from the Linde apparatus, which supplied atmospheric nitrogen to the 
cyanamide plant in the Stickstoffdunger factory, this oxygen having 
been practically all returned to the air. This realization was so far 
acted upon that a plant belonging to, and entirely operated by, the 
Farbwerke Hochst staff was erected within the Stickstoffdunger works, 
and the separate property of this plant was so far maintained that even 
the most highly placed officials of the Stickstoffdunger factory were not 
allowed access to it. Other cases of a somewhat different nature may 
be cited. The large ammonia oxidation plant at the Leverkusen works 
of the Bayer Company used an oxidizing catalyst supplied by the 
Badische Company, and, although the Farbwerke Héchst operates a 
large plant for the manufacture of hydrosulphites, the quantity of the 
latter which was used at Hochst in the manufacture of salvarsan. came 
from the Badische factory, at Ludwigshafen, because, it was said, of its 
special purity. : 
Thus far we have considered, in the main, the great factories which 
are undoubted models of equipment and control, but there are many 
others on an entirely different scale, and, it must also be said, some as 
badly equipped as the most antiquated of any of our English factories, 
and this is particularly the case with some of the works engaged solely 
in making heavy chemicals. ; . 
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