AN IMPROVED PROCESS FOR THE TREATMENT OF NIGHT SOIL AND TOWN OR DOMESTIC REFUSE MATTERS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF TAPFo Guano
Year: 1871

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Alexander Melville Clark, of 53, Chancery Lane,
in the County of Middlesex, Patent Agent, for the Invention of
"AN IMPROVED PROCESS FOR THE TREATMENT OF NIGHT SOIL AND TOWN OR
DOMESTIC REFUSE MATTERS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF TAPFo Guano.”-
A communication from abroad by Victor Plasse, of the Compagnie
Choufourmière de l'Ouest Paris France
-
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION filed by the said Alexander Melville Clark
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition
and Declaration, on the 26th October 1871, pursuant to the 9th
Section of the Patent Law Amendment Act, 1852.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, ALEXANDER
MELVILLE CLARK, of 53, Chancery Lane, in the County of Middlesex,
Patent Agent, send greeting.
WHEREAS I am in possession of an Invention for "AN IMPROVED
PROCESS FOR THE TREATMENT OF NIGHT SOIL AND TOWN OR DOMESTIC REFUSE
MATTERS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF TAPFO GUANO," and have petitioned

page_text: ciples of manufactured manure, too often at the risk of annihilating or
destroying the productive power of other useful elements.
Such methods of manufacture can only produce manures of inferior
quality, the commercial price of which, however, often exceeds their
agricultural value.
Even stable manure, which has a universally recognized value, only
restores to the soil but a small proportion of the fertilizing elements
which have been extracted from it, and the same may be said of human
excreta when used alone as manure.
Looking at the question in an agricultural light, towns are so many
human stables, producing manure both richer and in more abundant
quantity than that of farms, and it is this wealth which it is proposed by
the present Invention to collect, concentrate, and treat both chemically
and by mechanical means in order to secure all its utilizable properties
in the form of solid products which are rendered inodorous and capable
of being preserved until required for use without depreciating the
quality, at same time providing a composition of sufficient richness to
repay the cost of transport.
The vegetable kingdom consists of infinitely varied combinations of
five or six elements. All plants, flowers, and fruits are formed of
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with a little potash, sulphur, lime, or
silica, and especially azote, which latter is contained to such a large
amount in human excreta, and moro particularly in urine, but in so
fermentable a form that on contact with the air the azote becomes
rapidly transformed into carbonate of ammonia, having a very disagrec-
able odour.
All the above clements exist in the refuse of towns and in con-

page_text: This Invention consists in utilizing certain residues as agents in the
preparation of manures, that is to say, I use dry vegetable and earthy
matters for the absorption of liquid or viscous matters, and obtain by
the combination of the whole after filtering, drying, pounding, and
mixing a plastic mass, which is moulded into cakes, dried in the open.
air or artificially, and then pulverized for use as manure.
This Invention consists, first, in causing the several elements con-
stituting the refuse of towns to react on one another, and it relates more
especially to the employment of drying matters which themselves form
manures, in order to retain (and to convert by new combinations into
solid inodorous products) the utilizable principles of urine, sewage water,
and other fertilizing liquids.
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Secondly. In a method of treating the said alvine sewage and other
liquid matters to be used in the manufacture of artificial manure (and
which are now treated by various disinfecting, decanting, and preci-
pitating processes) by the active agency of electricity, that is to say, by
passing a current of electric fluid through the liquids to be purified,.
which facilitates the chemical reaction, precipitation, and settling of the
matters held in suspension, as also the clarification and purification of
the polluted liquid.
Thirdly. It relates to a method of consuming in certain cases these
deleterious gases, which are incapable of being combined or sufficiently
purified by the disinfecting processes employed by the aid of petroleum
in ignition floated on the surface of the liquid. The means employed
in this manufacture vary according as they apply to fermentable or non-
fermentable or solid matters.
In the first case the preliminary employment of disinfectants previous
to further treatment is indispensable, and in the latter case suitable
precipitants and absorbents are used.
It will be found more economical and wholesome and of greater
advantage in an agricultural point of view to collect the fertilizing
matters in as fresh a condition as possible and in small quantities
before their decomposition either in the open air or in water im-
poverishes their quality, besides increasing the cost of treatment.
The refuse of slaughter houses, fish markets, and dwellings are col-
lected in metal cases and sprinkled with slacked lime or phenicated
sawdust if necessary. Human evacuations are also collected in a fresh

page_text: condition in suitable receptacles, pipes and moveable pits on the sepa-
rating system, which permits of the solid matters being obtained free
from urine or water. The conveyance of the matters to the several
points where they are to be submitted to treatment is to be effected as
promptly as possible. Sewage water, urine, blood, and other fertilizing
liquids are first deodorized and purified by decanting, filtering, and
successive precipitations.. The fluid deposit is then combined with
earthy residues of road sweepings and dried refuse of various kinds
serving as absorbent materials. The liquids are preserved in reservoirs
containing a layer of slacked lime at bottom, and covered with a layer
of vegetable, animal, or mineral charcoal, which serves to absorb the
deterious gases evolved, and if this proves insufficient, they may be dis-
persed so as to become innocuous by the combustion of petroleum as
before mentioned. The chemical precipitation is also aided by an
electric current. Fecal matters are first disinfected, thickened, and if
necessary enriched by the addition of phosphates of lime or magnesia
and superphosphates, and then mixed with slaughter house refuse, bone
powder, whether calcined or otherwise, soot, ashes, and other residues,
and after trituration and mixing are baked in globular form or moulded
in brick machines.
Sweepings are to be sifted and the finer particles utilized as ab-
sorbents, while that which remains is sorted, and bones or other useful
substances are ground up and added to the matters of which the manure
is to bo composed, or in the reactions during its preparation. Com-
bustible substances are burnt and the ashes combined with the mass as
charcoal or animal black. The solid liquid and earthy matters com-
prising these several preparations are utilized to form a compost, which
is watered with the liquid preserved as before mentioned in order to
convert it into a rich manure.
Drying or even freezing processes may in some cases be employed to
separate the water from the matters in which it is contained, the means
and also the agents employed will vary according to the composition
and the degree of fermentation of the matters under treatment.
The disinfectants employed may consist of lime, magnesia, charcoal,
tar, clay, and their derivatives, chlorides, sulphates, and phosphates,
superphosphates; sulphates of iron and zinc, perchloride of iron, per-
manganates and other chemical salts, phenic and carbolic acids, bone
powder, tan or ashes.

page_text: The precipitants employed may consist of lime, phosphates. of mag-
nesia, and lime, sulphate of alumina, chloride of lime, perchloride of iron,
silicate of soda, and other salts usually employed for the purpose either
separately or in combination.
The absorbents employed may consist of mould, tan, dried mud, rotten
straw, dry horsedung, house refuse, seaweed, ashes, soot, sawdust, dried
peat, plaster, marl, quicklime, charcoal, hair, leather and bone shavings,
waste of chocolate manufactories, cacao pulp, waste of stearine works
and fat boilers, rice, seeds, manure in powder, blood, and other matters.
These several agents, which are commonly used for the above purposes,
may be employed either alone or combined in various proportions, but
care should be taken to avoid the use of beat for vaporizing the liquids
or drying the fluids, as the slightest increase in temperature is sufficient
to volatilize the ammonia. The thickening, pounding, and mixing of a
plastic composite material serves to retain its fertilizing properties, and
being compressed by suitable machinery in the form of bricks it becomes
perfectly inodorous, and may be preserved for any length of time, espe-
cially by putting a crust on the bricks by baking the same.
The taffo may be combined, if desired, in suitable proportions with
chemical manures and other substances used for enriching the soil.
In witness whereof, I, the said Alexander Melville Clark, have
hereunto set my hand and seal, this Twenty-sixth day of October,
in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and seventy-
one.