IMPROVEMENTS IN FILTERING AND PURIFYING WATER
Year: 1875

page_text: COMPLETE SPECIFICATION filed by Octavius Vaughan Morgan and
Gustav Robert Moelchaerek at the Office of the Commissioners
of Patents, with their Petition and Declaration, on the 20th
February 1875, pursuant to the 9th Section of the Patent Law
Amendment Act, 1852.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, we, OCTAVIUS
VAUGHAN MORGAN, of Kensington, Middlesex, and GUSTAV ROBERT
MOELCHAEREK, of Battersea, Surrey, send greeting.
WHEREAS we are in possession of an Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS
IN FILTERING AND PURIFYING WATER," and have petitioned Her Majesty:
to grant unto us, our executors, administrators, and assigns, Her Royal
Letters Patent for the same, and have made solemn Declaration that
we are the true and first Inventors thereof.
NOW KNOW YE, that we, the said Octavius Vaughan Morgan and
Gustav Robert Moelchaerek, do hereby declare that the following
Complete Specification, under our hands and seals, fully describes and
ascertains the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the
the same is to be performed, in and by the following statement:-
We use for the purpose of filtering and purifying water any of the
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page_text: well-known filtering media, and in any of the forms which have been
found best adapted for this purpose. In addition to these previously
known media we take calcium carbonate, more or less pure, and filter
the water through the calcium carbonate either before or after it has
percolated through the other media, or we mechanically combine.
calcium carbonate with any other medium with which it can be
combined; or we impregnate other filtering media with minute particles
of calcium carbonate, so that the water to be filtered may pass over and
through the calcium carbonate at the same time that it passes through
the other media. In all cases it is essential that the water shall come
in contact with as large a surface of the calcium carbonate as is required;
and the use of calcium carbonate is not claimed except when the water
is filtered through some other medium.
The purpose which the calcium carbonate is designed to fulfil is the
removal of lead from its solution in drinking water, especially those
solutions of lead which are commonly found to result from the contact
of soft water or water containing certain salts or other ingredients with
leaden pipes, cisterns, pumps, fittings, and other vessels or apparatus.
We find that the action of calcium carbonate upon the usual solutions
of lead in drinking water is to render the lead insoluble and to
precipitate it. It is then easily filtered out by several of the more
efficient forms of filter, especially those known as the silicated carbon
filters.
Having thus stated the nature of the Invention, we will now proceed
more fully to describe the same.
We take the materials of which any known efficient filtering medium
is composed, such for instance as carbon, animal, vegetable, or mineral,
in the form of their charcoals or cokes or any salt of iron natural or
artificial used for the purpose. These may be broken up into small
particles and gauged to the most desirable size, then mixed with
calcium carbonate, natural or artificial, solid or broken into small
particles, and with the other materials may be wrought into form in the
usual way by adding adhesivo carbonaceous compounds, and afterwards
pressed and carbonized.
The proportions of the calcium carbonate may vary with the nature
of the other materials, the larger the quantity of calcium carbonate

page_text: introduced the longer will the precipitating action continue. Three
ounces of calcium carbonate mixed with seven pounds of silicated
carbon is found to be very efficacious and work well.
What are known as carbon filter blocks or other filtering media of
any shape or form may be made more porous than usual, and the extra
porosity charged with finely pulverized calcium carbonate by grinding
it in a mortar with water, and then percolating through the blocks or
other filtering media.
A compound block of carbon or other filtering material may be
formed by alternate strata of porous carbon and porous calcium
carbonate, either natural or artificial, and any desired number of these
strata may be combined in any form best suited for the purpose; or a
separate cup or vessel of any shape or form may be made of porous
calcium carbonate, or of calcium carbonate combined with other
filtering media, which can be used in addition to or in conjunction
with any other filter; or the latter cup or vessel may be used as a filter
by itself.
In witness whereof, we, the said Octavius Vaughan Morgan and
Gustav Robert Moelchaerek, have hereunto set our hands and
seals, this Eighteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and seventy-five.