Fitzgerald enterprise. (Fitzgerald, Ga.) 1895-1912, 1903-06-12

or as IL Is more generally known In
this country of acid phosphate Of
lime. The materials necessary for
this manufacture are sulphuric acid
and phosphate rock. The plant re-
CURED for the manufacture of sui
phuric acid is costly one, and the
process is somewhat complicated.
Either birthstone from Sicily, or
pyrites, which is 9. compound of sui
phur and iron, some Of which is i'm
ported from Spain and some produced
from mines In this country. are the
raw materials used in the manufac-
ture.
The birthstone or pyrites are burned
In specially constructed burners, and
the sulphurous gases which result from
the burning are caused to mix with
| nitrous gases produced from nitrate Of
soda, and drawn into great towers
made OF lead and packed with flints;
thence they are drawn into immense
leaden chambers or rooms, usually
|
these chambers the sulphurous and nj
trous gases are mixed with steam, and
condensed into sulphuric acid, which
rails in rain on the floors of the lead
en- chambers. 1t is necessary to con-
struct these chambers of lead, because
almost any other material would be
destroyed and eaten out by the action
OF this corrosive acid.
The phosphate rock is hauled to the
factory, usually building located
alongside the sulphuric acid chambers,
1t is there thrown into crushers which
break 1t into small pieces; thence con-
Veyed to the grinding machinery,
either steel mills or buhrstones,
where it is pulverized into a fine meal
Or flour. You would naturally ask
at this point, why not use this fine
phosphate meal directly on the soil,
without mixing it with the caustic
corrosive sulphuric acid? 1t is sim
ply because this meal is of a rocky
nature and only dissolves with diff
Guilty In the soil waters, and we have
| seen plants require their food to be
easily soluble in water so that the
roots suck it in. The phosphate rock
meal, no matter how finely ground,
dissolves only to very limited ex-
tent in water, and it is necessary to so
treat 1t as to liberate the rock-bound
phosphoric acid; and render it solu-
bic In water. Hence the necessity
for the sulphurio acid.
The phosphate meal (say It is from
South Carolina rock, and contains 20
per cent of phosphoric acid, combined
With lime to form 81 per cent of bone
phosphate of lime) ia first weighed,
and we will take say 1000 pounds of
1t, and dump it into circular cast-iron
mixer, into which has already been
introduced 1000 pounds of sulphuric
acid OF the proper strength.
The acid and meal are now thor
oughly mixed togethed by machinery
in the iron pan. The mixture be-
comes very hot, the strong sulphuric
acid attacks the lime combined with
the phosphoric acid Of the phosphate
meal with amazing and furious ener-
BY and appropriates to itself the great
er part Of the lime in the form of sui
phate of lime, gypsum or land-plaster,
and liberates the same moment the
phosphoric acid, which is only allowed
to retain its hold on small part of
the lime, with which it was first COM
bined.
This smaller portion of lime and
the phosphoric acid with which it is
combined Is what the chemists call
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, or superphos.
plate of lime. 1t is also known as
the acid phosphate of lime. This
acid phosphate of lime, or superphos.
plate, is soluble in water; we have,
therefore, accomplished what we set
out to do, rendered the phosphoric
acid soluble. This dicovery was made
by the great chemist Liebig, who thus
put the entire world in his debt, lay
ing the foundations of the great fer
tilizer industry, and rendering an in
estimable boon to modern agriculture.
JOHN M. McCANDLESS,
State Chemist.