IMPROVEMENTS IN MEANS AND PROCESSES FOR OBTAINING COLOURING MATTERS FROM CANNEL, ANTHRACITE, AND OTHER COALS, APPLICABLE TO VARIOUS USEFUL PURPOSES
Year: 1877

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Garrett Tongue at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 12th January 1877. 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,

page_text: By the method of decomposition the salts of strontian, of barium, of magnesia, 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 as a
colouring matter to various useful purposes.
The product of the oxydation of fossil coals is soluble in alkalis, and the compounds
of this product of oxydation may be applied as a colouring matter to various
useful purposes.