AN IMPROVED PROCESS OF DECOLORIZING AND OTHERWISE IM- PROVING CERTAIN SOLID AND LIQUID MATTERS
Year: 1878

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Alexander Melville Clark at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 20th February 1878. A communica-
tion from abroad by Eugène Adolphe Guion, of Paris, France.
ALEXANDER MELVILLE CLARK, of 53, Chancery Lane, in the County of Middlesex,
Patent Agent.
"AN IMPROVED PROCESS OF DECOLORIZING AND OTHERWISE IM-
PROVING CERTAIN SOLID AND LIQUID MATTERS." [A communication from abroad
by Eugène Adolphe Guion, of Paris, France.]
This Invention consists in a process of decolorizing and otherwise improving by
the action of the electric or other intense artificial light (such as the Drummond or
oxy-hydrogen light), all kinds of matters which are capable of being decolorized by the
action of the solar rays, whether in a liquid or semi-liquid state, such as oils, syrups,
molasses, fats, and others, or in a solid form, as wood, grasses, paper, and other
fabrics.
By exposing, for example, bottles containing oil to the action of the electric
light, the oil will be decolorized after a longer or shorter time, which varies
according to the intensity of the rays.
Various forms of apparatus may be employed in the industrial application of
artificial light for decolorizing purposes, but these can only be determined by
experiment.
For some substances or matters diffused light will answer the purpose, while for
others the direct action of the light will be necessary, whilst solid, opaque, or dense
substances would require to be treated differently to transparent matters.
Some matters, such as bones, might be exposed to the direct action of the
light without being placed in a container. Others, such as wax, should be spread
out in thin layers, so as to afford extended surfaces for the light which cannot
penetrate the substance to act upon; in this case the light would be reflected
downwards upon horizontal surfaces. Other matters, such as certain liquids on the
other hand, would be traversed by the light, and for this purpose should be treated
in long narrow vessels in order to concentrate the whole force of the rays within a
limited area and utilise their effect by the depth or thickness of the stratum through
which they pass.
In this case it would be preferable to use a kind of tube with its
inner surface silvered or otherwise caused to reflect the light upwards. Thus I may

page_text: use a tube with a glass bottom, of convenient length for the purpose, whose interior
surfaces are made to reflect the light, and of which the cover also is silvered, so
that the whole of the light projected into the tube may be reflected by its sides.
It may be necessary to leave a space between the cover and the liquid to
allow the external air to be in contact therewith; the surface of the liquid and
the cover might accordingly be made rather narrower than the diameter of the tube,
or be provided with perforations. One advantage of this arrangement is that the
more highly heated bottom layers are free to be displaced by the upper layers,
and rise to the surface, thus producing a continual renewal of the surfaces.
Experience will decide in this and other cases the best methods to be employed
in carrying out the Invention, but in the majority of cases it will be preferable in
decolorizing liquids, fats, and other opaque matters to bring them under the direct
and immediate action of the electric light without the interposition of any glass
between them. For example, a large shallow receptacle may be employed in order
to limit as much as possible the depth of the liquid, the diameter of the receptacle
depending on the distance at which the light ceases to exert its decolorizing power,
which can only be determined by experiment.
It has been found that the decolorization is the more rapid as the light is in con-
tact with a larger surface of the matter to be decolorized.
It is therefore necessary that the oxygen of the air heated by the light should
consume at the surface of the liquid, and over the largest possible extent thereof,
the coloring matters it contains. A kind of fermentation is then set up, which rapidly
develops when once it has commenced.
The difficulty is to initiate this fermentation, and with this object it may be of
advantage to add to the matters to be decolorized a suitable ferment or matter
capable of inducing fermentation, and which may vary according to the nature of
the matters under treatment.
It may be that even after being withdrawn from the action of the light the
matter in which the decolorizing fermentation has been engendered will still con-
tinue to become decolorized for some time, and in this case the light may be made to
travel very slowly over the surface of the matters to be decolorized, so as to act in
succession on all points. Or the receptacle for the matters may be made to move
concentrically or excentrically around the light, according to the form of the light,
with the same object.
To sum up this description, the results of experiments as yet made in the prac-
tical application of the artificial light to the above purposes, are as follows:-
1st. To dispense as far as possible with the interposition of glass between the
light and the matter to be decolorized.
2ndly. To add certain matters capable of inducing and developing a deco-
lorizing fermentation. Certain liquids or bodies may have mixed with them a
material which would not injuriously affect their subsequent use. Thus, in
decolorizing linseed oil for artists' use, the addition of spirits of turpentine would
facilitate the decolorizing fermentation. Certain solid bodies might be plunged from
time to time in solutions favoring the same result.
3rdly. To so arrange the receptacle for the matters under treatment, that all
parts of its contents may be successively subjected to the action of the light, if
it is found that the fermentation will continue when once it has been set up after
the light has been withdrawn.
The decolorizing effect is not the only result attained; certain matters are im-
proved both in taste and smell after being subjected to the treatment above
described, and its application for this purpose constitutes a part of this Invention.