IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF MANURES
Year: 1856

page_text: (This Invention received Provisional Protection, but notice to proceed with the
application for Letters Patent was not given within the time prescribed
by the Act.)
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Frederick Oldfield Ward and.
Frederic Wynauts, at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with
their Petition, on the 9th December 1856.
We, FREDERICK OLDFIELD WARD, Esquire, of Cork Street, in the County of
Middlesex, in England, now staying at Brussels, in Belgium, and FREDERIC
WYNAUTS, Captain of Engineers, (in the service of His Majesty the King of
the Belgians), of the Rue de la Paix, in tho Province of Brabant, in Belgium,
do hereby declare the naturo of the Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
MANUFACTURE OF MANURES" to be as follows:- .
Our Invention relates to manures obtained by the disintegration of azotised
organic matters, especially of such among them as are obtainable at a low
price; for example, the waste of wool, horn, hair, leather, silk, worn-out cloth-
ing, old shoes, woollen rags, animal offal and excrements, fish, the refuse of
the glue manufacture, and other azotised residue.
Our Invention has for its object to improve and cheapen the production of
manures from such azotised organic matters. .
The novel means we employ are in general terms as follows:-Instead of
employing vessels open to atmospheric pressure, as hitherto practised, for the
reduction of these substances into manure, we employ the powerful agency of the
closed boiler or antoclave digester, whereby we are enabled to bring to bear for

page_text: the reduction of those substances into manures by disintegration higher degrees
of pressure and temperature than any heretofore employed for that purpose, the
result being that we can thus rapidly and economically overcome the resistance
and accomplish the disintegration of the most hard and stubborn of them.
The saving we thus effect is very considerable; we avoid the usual loss of
stoam and heat and the consequent waste of fuel; we save time and wages by
accelerating the process; and we are enabled to substitute for the costly
chemical agents hitherto necessary, cheap or even costless agents, or if the
costly agents are retained, we greatly diminish the quantity requisite to
produce a given result.
Among the cheap or costless agents here referred to are plain water and
salts, whose base is separable by ammonia, examples of which are found in
the mother waters of salt works and of manufacturies of alum from pyritic
Echist, such mother waters, as well as the acid refuse of tanneries, of the puri-
fication of oil and other acid residua, the waste products of the gas manu-
facture, peat (which has acid properties,) and in special cases soluble silica
and the silicates of alumina are employed by us separately or conjointly, the
choice being determined by local and other circumstances, to promote disinte-
gration, to fix or contribute ammonia, to moderate putrescibility, or to produce
several such effects in conjunction.
When two or more of the organic matters to be treated present properties
or yield products differing in character, in such a manner as to be capable of
reciprocally improving or correcting each other, we mix them and treat them
together. Thus, for example, finding that leather gives acid and wool alkaline
products, we mix these to obtain neutral products with an economy of the
special agents otherwise necessary. So again, moist and dry substances, as for
example, urino and blood on one hand, and horn, leather, wool, &c., on the
other, are advantageously treated in conjunction, needless cost of evaporation
being thus saved, and the product enriched by the ammonia left by the urine
or blood. We also avoid needless cost of evaporation by the mode of heating
which we prefer, namely, by steam in a closed serpentine, applied so as to
avoid direct contact with the matters treated and the consequent introduction
into these of an excess of water of condensation. Still further to economise,
we frequently combine a preliminary low temperature process with a subse-
quent high temperature process in the manufacture of manure by the disinte-
gration of azotised organic matters. Thus we soften and swell up leather,
horn, wool, &c., by a preliminary maceration at low temperature in an ammo-
niacal liquor, such as decomposed urine or gas liquor rendered caustic by the
addition of lime, and we afterwards proceed to apply the process of digestion

page_text: to complete the disintegration, which by this doublo operation is rendered more
easy and economical; so again in dealing with mixed tissues partly of animal
fibre, partly of vegetable fibre, we greatly facilitate the high temperature
process by exposing the matters to be treated to the preliminary action of the
air of acidulated water and of a sort of fermentation which takes place in the
heaps and reduces the cohesion of the vegetable fibre.
The above are our principal means of accomplishing, under the varying
circumstances of the complex cases which occur in practice, the object of our
Invention; other means of an accessory character, whether for the divisions
or agitation of the matters treated, or for the improved adaptation of the
products to serve as manuro by the addition of phosphates, alkaline salts,
drying or absorbent powders, disinfecting agents, &c., will only be claimed so
far as combined with and auxiliary to our autoclave process above described.