IMPROVEMENTS IN MEANS AND PROCESSES FOR OBTAINING COLOURING MATTERS FROM CANNEL, ANTHRACITE, AND OTHER COALS, APPLICABLE TO VARIOUS USEFUL PURPOSES
Year: 1876

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Garrett Tongue at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 19th August 1870. A communication
from abroad by Doctor Meusel, of Breslau, in the Empire of Germany.
JOHN GARRETT TONGUE, of the Firm of Tongue and Birkbeck, Patent Agents and
Engineers, of 34, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, in the County of
Middlesex. "IMPROVEMENTS IN MEANS AND PROCESSES FOR OBTAINING COLOURING
MATTERS FROM CANNEL, ANTHRACITE, AND OTHER COALS, APPLICABLE TO VARIOUS
USEFUL PURPOSES." A communication from abroad by Doctor Meusel, of Breslau,
in the Empire of Germany.
According to this Invention fossil coal or cannel coal, or anthracite or boghead
coal are treated advantageously in fine powder with oxydising chemical compounds
by ordinary or higher temperatures in suitable vessels.
The most advantageous method of carrying out these improvements is to heat the
different coals finely powdered with nitric acid, or with potassic or sodic nitrate and
sulphuric acid. Also potassic chlorate or potassic chromate, or hypochloride of lime
or compounds of manganese may be used for the reaction with or without an acid.
By the action of nitric acid or nitrates with acids compounds of nitrogen with
oxygen are developed, which are to be used in the manufacture of sulphuric acid or
of salts containing nitrogen bound to oxygen.
Coals treated in the above manner undergo a great change. A great part of the
coal can now be extracted by caustic alkalis, and by ammonia or by the carbonates
of soda or potassium or ammonia advantageously, by heating the solution of alkalis
with the product of the above treatment. A deep brown coloured solution, and a
black residue is so obtained. The black residue is a deep black covering colour,
which may be used for lime colour (glue colour) or oil colour, or with bone black,
or instead of bone black soot or graphite; it may also be applied for the black for
printing, or for blacking and washing, painting, besprinkling, or other like purposes.
The brown solution of the alkali salts may be used directly for colouring, for
instance by fluids, by soap, or otherwise. The solutions give by evaporating the alkali
salts and by decomposition with metallic salts new salts of metals which are to be
used as colours.
By this method of decomposition the salts of strontian, of barium, of magnesia,

page_text: of aluminium, of manganese, of iron, of cobalt, of nickel, of zinc, of cadmium, of
lead, of tin, of copper, and chromic oxyde are obtained.
All these bodies are black or black brown, or brown colours, which may be
mixed with other colouring matters; they can be used for painting, printing, and
colouring. These colours are obtained as precipitates, and can be purified by
water.
The alkali solution can also be decomposed by the soluble metallic salts above,
cotton or wool, and may so be used by the dyer.
The alkali solution can also be decomposed by acids. A black brown precipitate
is obtained which may be washed in water, and which may also be used as a
colouring matter. This black precipitate is the acid in which the coals are partly
converted by the treatment with oxydising compounds.
By the above described means fossil coal is oxydised, and the black residue
obtained by the decomposition of the oxydised fossil coal may be applied to various
useful purposes.
The product of the oxydation of fossil coals soluble in alkalis and the compounds
of this product of oxydation may be applied to various useful purposes.