THATCHER NEWS FOR AUGUST, 1923 7
View of Detroit Plant, Solvay Process Company. and then burned for days at a estimated to account for from two by a young French doctor, Nich time. It was necessary to keep to three per ce?t. of the hard cov olas Le Blanc. Le Blanc was adding the sun dried plants to ering or crust of the earth. This physician to the Duke of Orleans, these open fires and to constantly element in conjunction with chlo who provided the capital for his stir or agitate the molten ashes. rine is in every day use in our experiments, which finally result The ashes from the burning of households as sodium chloride, or ed in the establishment of a these plants, which thus slowly common salt. In this form it was method of treating sodium chlor accumulated, provided a very im well known to the ancients and ide with sulphuric acid, and then pure form of sodium carbonate, or finds frequent mention in the Old heating the resulting sodium sul soda ash which was known as Testament as a food preserver and phate, or salt cake, with limestone barilla. It required about sixty seasoning agent. and coal to produce sodium car tons of this dried seaweed to pro These deposits of sodium chlo bonate. This method is some vide approximately three tons of ride were formed in different times referred to as the salt cake the crude soda ash. This alkali manner in the earlv history and process for manufacturing soda contained from ten to thirty per geological childhood of the earth. ash. cent, of sodium carbonate, vary Some deposits are attributed to Le Blanc’s first experimental ing with the character of the early volcanic action, and others plant at St. Denis was seized by vegetable matter of the plants to the evaporation of sea water the French revolutionists in 1793 which were utilized. The re and liquids which held salt in and the Duke of Orleans, bene mainder of the composition, or in the seas. Sea water contains factor of the inventor, was be residue, consisted chiefly of po solution. Sodium chloride is the headed. Napoleon, realizing the tassium sulphate, sodium chloride principal solid held in suspension value of experimental work along and insoluble organic matter. about two and one-half per cent, chemical channels in the conduct These soda plants were grown on of these combined elements. of his wars, returned the plant to the Mediterranean shore, princi It was not, however, until near Le Blanc in 1806, but the inventor pally in Spain, and the seed were the close of the eighteenth cen was without funds to carry on his considered of such importance by tury that a Swedish chemist suc work and eventually in his de the Spanish government that to ceeded in separating these ele spondency took his own life in export the seed of these plants ments—that is, isolating chlorine the poorhouse. was an offense which was punish from sodium chloride and open In 1823, just one hundred years able by death. ing the doors of science to some ago, the English government re It is a far cry from those con of the possibilities from the use moved a burdensome tax on salt, ditions to the ones under which of these elements which perhaps and made possible the establish the many refined forms of alkali had not been thought possible up ment of the first plant to manu are produced today, but these 'to that time. facture soda ash on a large scale changes have all taken place in a About 1775 the French Acad by the process invented by Nich little over one hundred years and emy of Science offered a prize olas Le Blanc. This plant was the most consistent progress has equivalent to about five hundred built by James Muspratt at Liver been made during the last fifty dollars for the discovery of a plan pool, and while the methods then years. or process which would provide a employed are now obsolete, the Sodium, from which sodium practical and workable method of establishment of Tames Mus- carbonate, or soda ash, is now de obtaining soda ash from the use pratt’s plant marks the beginning rived, occurs in various forms in of sodium chloride. This prize of a tremendous amount of work different parts of the earth and is was taken about six years later along experimental lines which