IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF ALUMINIUM AND ALLOYS OF ALUMINIUM
Year: 1883

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Walter Weldon, of Rede Hall, Burstow, Surrey for an
Invention of IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF ALUMINIUM AND
ALLOYS OF ALUMINIUM,
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Walter Weldon at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 8th January 1883.
•
WALTER WELDON, of Rede Hall, Burstow, Surrey, IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
MANUFACTURE OF ALUMINIUM AND ALLOYS OF ALUMINIUM
This invention consists, firstly, in reducing aluminium from various of its
compounds by means of the metal manganese, mixed or alloyed or not with other
metal or metals, and, secondly, in preparing by double decomposition in the dry
way certain compounds of aluminium from which that metal can then be reduced
either by means of manganese as aforesaid or by means of sodium.
Aluminium is at present manufactured by reducing the double chloride of
aluminium and sodium by means of free sodium, and it has hitherto been believed
that aluminium compounds cannot be reduced by any metal other than either an
alkaline metal or a metal of an alkaline earth. By the first part of this invention
metallic manganese, mixed or alloyed or not with another metal or other metals,
is substituted for the sodium which has hitherto been exclusively employed for the
purpose in question.
At present anhydrous aluminium chloride is obtained (and it has never hitherto
been obtained otherwise) by heating a mixture of anhydrous alumina and dry
carbon to a high temperature in a stream of chlorine gas. For this costly method
of obtaining anhydrous aluminium chloride I substitute by the present invention
the method which consists in fusing cryolite, natural or artificial, or artificial or
native aluminium fluoride, with anhydrous calcium chloride, or with the anhydrous
chloride of an alkaline metal, or of an alkaline earth metal other than calcium.
And by substituting for the chloride of such inetal the bromide, iodide, or sulphido
of such metal, 1 obtain bromide, iodide or sulphide of aluminium at will. 1 then
reduce any of these compounds of aluminium either by sodium or by manganese,
mixed or alloyed or not with another metal or with other metals as aforesaid.
To obtain alloys of aluminium, under the present invention, I have present with
the bodies which are to react upon each other to yield metallic aluminium, the
metal an alloy of which with aluminium I desire to obtain.

page_text: SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent filed
by the said Walter Weldon in the Great Seal Patent Office on the 6th July
1883.
"IMPROVE-
WALTER WELDON, of Rede Hall, Burstow, in the County of Surrey,
MENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF ALUMINIUM AND ALLOYS OF ALUMINIUM,”
This invention consists in reducing aluminium by means either of the metal
sodium or of the metal manganese, mixed or alloyed or not with another metal or
with other metals, from compounds of aluminium formed by double decomposition
in the dry way.
In performing this invention, I take either native or artificial cryolite and I fuse
it with either the chloride, bromide, iodide, or sulphide of either calcium, strontium,
barium, potassium, or sodium. I then treat the product of this operation at a
suitably high temperature with either sodium or manganese, mixed or alloyed or
not with either another metal or with other metals.
In witness whereof I, the said Walter Weldon, have hereunto set my hand
and seal this nineteenth day of June in the year of Our Lord One thousand
eight hundred and eighty-three.