The Caucasian., 1920-01-16
Had SoY0 90 America Secret
OF &aking Explosive
) FSon5 &iso
elg ,SsIRRSg PLANT RESULTS.
8yiS 6o eigHs Gosfhs 0s Con-
giHees Seaisee OF His eeSeaSg
@y aaaeeT eWo7Ge

20 ehe etorp oe Aow che Ordnance fse-
portnBnt o9 the Tnits0 States Army
made se possible Cor GmericG, until
chen utterly backing I'm ammunition
ana ia facilities for making 10, Go man
ufactuee unlimited quantities o9 pow
erfue explosives out og air sn& cock.
Vt was largely the knowledge of ehis
PACE chat eorcea Germany 90 surrender
when she die.
The secret &as Secure4 qrono Ges-
many Aerselg N wac an open 9usi-
ness transaction Setweea business
men, whereby @e apparently acquired
nothing more military chan o process
foe making @ nigh gra8e Ssrtilizev
known az cyanami6.
Tsank Sherman Was4Surn. Aea& OF
the group OF business men w4o Sought
this process, conceived the sern o4
the idea in the carly nineties while IN
South America as consulting engineer
in connection with the production and
shipping o9 Chilean nitrate of soda
Nitrogen compounds are an essential
part OF all commercial Fertilizers. Che
only available 0atural citrate deposits
in large quantities are in Chile. This
supply was diminishing. Germany,
which mad been taking aBouS one
third OF the Chilean nitrates, was al
ready experimenting with processes
<or t,o;r ort;6o;o1 SnroEl,, o+;o, A., 1Oo-
Me- Washburn. secured N Germany
the American 0ights of tAe cyanamid
process which ha0 Seen iDvented On
that country.
eurnins AIe snes Q weapon
By this process air, which Is 0 Ni3
ture of about four-fifths nitrogen gas
and one-fifth oxygen, is placed in con-
tainers and subjected to pressure and
cold until it turns to liquid. Chen
the nitrogen is distilled in much the
same manner as alcohol is separated
from water But before this nitrogen
can be used as fertilizer 1t must be
combined with a chemical combination
of lime and carbon known as calcium
carbide, produced by burning ordinary
limestone in big rotary kilns and COM
bining it in the electric furnace with
carbon supplied in the form OF ordi-
nary coke.
Cyanamid thus produced contains
the elements of ammonium nitrate, one
of the most powerful of modern explo-
sives. By one process ammonia is eN-
tracted from the cyanamid. BY an
other process nitric acid is extracted
namid. Then the ammonia and nitric
acid are combined and there you have
ammonium nitrate ready for packing
into shells with INT
There are three kinds OF explosives
used for bursting shells in modern
warfare-TNT, picric acid and ammo
mum nitrate The United States was
equally deficient in raw materials and
plants for manufacturing all three of
these explosives. Under the best Of
conditions the cost of either INT or
nitric acid is about two and one-half
the cost of ammonium nitrate. But
the United States was wholly depend
raw material for ammonium nitrate,
with the exception of small produc-
ton of nitrogen from the coking of
coal. The Chilean supply was 4,5OO
miles away from New York City by
way Of the Panama Canal, and the
route by way of the Straits of Magel-
Ian is nearly twice as long.
A Record Building Operation.
Shortly after the war began in Eu-
rope the German government entered
into the fixation of air nitrogen for
military explosives on a vast scale. 1t
was not, however, until the fall of 1917
that the United States government
took it up.
The Ordnance Department asked Mr..
Washburn's company to organize
subsidiary corporation, known as the
Air Nitrates Corporation, with Mr..
Washburn as president, to act as
agent of the government for the con-
struction and operation of the air nj
trates plant at Muscle Shoals, Ala
bama. This corporation provided the
designs, erected the equipment in the
chemical plants and supervised all the
other work. 1t also operated the
camp, the town and the plant Other
work is sublet to several of the best
known organizations in the United
| States. Westinghouse Church Kerr
| Company built the plant buildings, the
camp, the permanent city and utilities
| The ]. G. White Engineering Corpora
| tion designed and built the nitrate
acid plant The NJ. w. Kellogg Com
pany furnished the piping and built
the chimneys. On February 1G, 1918,
ground was broken, and eight months
and eight days later the $60,00O,C0O
Muscle Shoals plant began producing
ammonium nitrate. In that brief pc
| riai; $4,000 men had completed the
| plant and around it, where not q
| house stood before, had arisen q city
| of $4,000 inhabitants. \
This plant when in full operation
was ready to provide 13 per cent Of all
explosives to be used by all the allies
ON all the allied fronts during the ex-
pected spring drive Of 1919