Cooley's Cyclopaedia of Practical Receipts Volume Ii Part 106

This stamping apparatus consists of five or six large wooden beams, each weighing 1/8th of a ton. Each beam is covered at the bottom with iron, and is made to rise and fall in succession by means of projections from a horizontal axle, made to revolve either by water or steam power. Behind the stampers is an inclined board, upon which are placed the residue and coa.r.s.er portions of the ore already described, and when the stampers are in motion the ore slides down the inclined plane under them, and thus gets crushed. When it is thought the ore has been sufficiently crushed, it is, by means of a current of water running through the mill, carried away through a grating in front of the mill into a channel in which there are two pits, with the result that the more valuable and heavier portion of the ore becomes deposited in the first pit, whilst the inferior portion is carried on, and falls into the second one.

The crushed ore has, however, to undergo other operations before it is considered sufficiently pure for the furnace. That part (the purer portion, called the crop by the Cornish miner) which has deposited in the first pit after removal therefrom, is subjected to a series of further washings, the different apparatus by which these are effected being known in Cornish language as a buddle and a kieve.

"The crop is first subjected to washing in the buddle; this is a wooden trough about 8 feet long, 3 wide, and 2 deep, fixed in the ground with one end somewhat elevated. At the upper end a small stream of water enters, and is reduced to a uniform thin sheet by means of a distributing board, on which a number of small pieces of wood are fastened to break the stream. The ore to be washed is placed in small quant.i.ties at a time on a board just below the distributing board, and somewhat more inclined than the body of the buddle, and as the ore is spread out into a thin layer the water carries it forward.

"The richer portions subside near the head of the trough, and the light ores are carried further down. 'The heads' are then tossed into the kieve, a covered wooden tub, which is filled with water and ore added by a workman, who keeps the contents of the kieve in continual agitation by turning an agitator, the handle of which projects through the lid of the tub. When the vessel is nearly full the agitation is stopped; the kieve is struck sharply upon the side several times, and its contents are allowed to subside; the upper half of the sediment is again pa.s.sed through the buddle. Various modifications of the washing process are resorted to, but they are all the same in principle."[78]

[Footnote 78: Miller.]

The water which has been used in washing the ore on the buddle, as well as that in the kieve, contains in addition to the debris of the gangue more or less of small pieces of the ore itself. Hence this water is not allowed to escape, but conveyed into a narrow channel cut at the end of the buddle, where it deposits the solid materials. These being then removed undergo a second washing on an inclined stage, a process by which any remaining mineral is recovered, followed in Cornwall.

The above is the method of dressing the ores of lead and tin, and, with some modifications, those of copper.

Some metals, as, for example, certain iron and zinc ores, previous to being dressed, require a preliminary exposure for some time to the atmosphere. This operation, which is called 'weathering,' has the effect of aiding the subsequent removal by water of certain materials of a clayey, slatey, or marly nature, which sometimes adhere very tenaciously to the ores in question.

Again, in some cases weathering is had recourse to for obtaining a metallic compound in a soluble form. It is by this means that iron pyrites if exposed to the air after a time becomes converted into a sulphate of the metal.

Large quant.i.ties of commercial sulphate of iron or green vitriol are manufactured from this natural sulphate after it has been dissolved by the rain, and then crystallised. Sometimes the ores after dressing, and previous to roasting or smelting, are subjected to a process of calcination without access of air, with the object of depriving them of water, carbonic acid and bituminous matters, and also of rendering the ore softer and in a favorable condition to be acted upon by the subsequent metallurgic operations.

The ores having been by these various processes sufficiently freed from extraneous matters, are next, according to their composition, either submitted to the operations of roasting or smelting, and in many cases to both.

_Roasting._ This operation is mostly carried out in a reverbatory furnace.

The result of the process upon the ores containing sulphur, which are those chiefly subjected to it, varies with the nature of the ore. Thus, when the sulphides of antimony, a.r.s.enic, or zinc are roasted, the sulphur escapes as sulphurous anhydride with the formation of the volatile oxides of a.r.s.enic, antimony, or zinc, which sublime, and are afterwards collected and purified with cinnabar or native sulphide of mercury.

Sulphurous anhydride is evolved with the vapours of metallic mercury, these being at the same time condensed by cooling. When copper pyrites (the double sulphide of copper and iron) is placed in the reverbatory furnace, the copper and iron become converted into oxides.

When galena or lead sulphide is exposed to the roasting process, lead oxide and sulphate, with the copious escape of sulphurous acid, are at first formed. The oxide and sulphate become eventually decomposed, leaving behind metallic lead, with a small portion of a subsulphide of the metal.

In most cases, however, the effect of roasting on an ore is to convert it into an oxide.

Clay ironstone, which is that from which the greater part of the iron is manufactured in Great Britain, and that known as the black band of the Scotch coal fields, are impure carbonates of iron, and these when roasted yield ferric oxide. The roasting in the case of these minerals is sometimes effected in kilns, but more frequently in the open air; in the latter case by the firing of stacks composed of alternate layers of the ore and of small coal. Calamine or native carbonate of zinc is converted into oxide sometimes by being roasted in kilns, but more frequently in a reverbatory furnace.

_Smelting._ Except in those cases in which the ore is directly reduced from the state of a sulphide to that of a metal, it is, as has been shown, converted into an oxide. If, therefore, it be required to procure the metal _per se_, some method must be adopted for the removal of the oxygen from its oxide.

This process, which is called smelting, and is applied to most metallic oxides, whether of natural or artificial origin, consists in heating the oxide with a substance which has a stronger attraction for oxygen than the metal has. Such bodies are coal, c.o.ke, or charcoal, which when raised to very high temperatures in contact with certain metallic oxides, rob them of their oxygen, and thus reduce them to the state of metals, carbonic oxide or carbonic anhydride being at the same time formed and carried off. A mechanical impediment, however, to the reducing action of the fuel upon the ore exists in the rocky, earthy, and other impurities mostly present in large quant.i.ties, even after the dressing, which envelop the mineral, and afford it a protective covering. To remove these it is not only necessary that some substance should be added which has the power of combining with them, but of one which is capable of forming a compound which shall become fusible by the heat of the furnace, so that the molten metal as it sinks through it by reason of its greater specific gravity, and falls to the bottom of the furnace, shall be protected in doing so from contact with the air. Many substances, varying with the nature of the gangue accompanying them, are thus employed as fluxes, such as limestone, fluor spar, gypsum, heavy spar, &c., and they act by combining with the silicious compounds contained in the gangue attached to the ore, and forming a fusible silicate known as slag, which is from time to time run off by an aperture at the side of the furnace. Considerable knowledge and experience are required in the selection of suitable fluxes.

The smelting furnaces in which the deoxidation of iron is accomplished are of considerable size. The following description of one, together with the engraving, are from Professor Bloxam's able work, 'Chemistry: Inorganic and Organic,'

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Great care is necessary in first lighting the blast furnace, lest the new masonry should be cracked by too sudden a rise of temperature, and when once lighted, the furnace is kept in constant work for years, until in want of repair.

"When the fire has been lighted the furnace is filled up with c.o.ke, and as soon as this has burnt down to some distance below the chimney, a layer of the mixture of calcined ore with the requisite quant.i.ty of limestone is thrown upon it; over this there is placed another layer of c.o.ke, then a second layer of the mixture of ore and flux, and so on in alternate layers, until the furnace has been filled up; when the layers sink down fresh quant.i.ties of fuel, ore, and flux are added, so that the furnace is kept constantly full.

"As the air pa.s.ses from the tuyeres pipes into the bottom of the furnace, it parts with its oxygen to the carbon of the fuel, which it converts into carbonic acid, the latter pa.s.sing the red-hot fuel as it ascends in the furnace is converted into carbonic oxide by combining with an additional quant.i.ty of carbon. It is this carbonic oxide which reduces the calcined ore to the metallic state when it comes in contact with it at a red heat, in the upper part of the furnace, for carbonic oxide removes the oxygen at a high temperature from the oxides of iron, and becomes carbonic acid, the iron being left in the metallic state.

"But the iron so reduced remains disseminated through the ma.s.s of ore until it has pa.s.sed down to a part of the furnace which is more strongly heated, where the iron enters into combination with a small proportion of carbon to form cast-iron, which fuses or runs down into the crucible or cavity for its reception at the bottom of the furnace.

"At the same time the clay contained in the ore is acted upon by the lime of the flux, producing a double silicate of alumina and lime, which also falls in the liquid state into the crucible, where it forms a layer of slag above the heavier metal. This slag, which has five or six times the bulk of the iron, is allowed to acc.u.mulate in the crucible and to run over its edge down the incline upon which the blast furnace is built; but when a sufficient quant.i.ty of cast iron is collected at the bottom of the crucible, it is run out through a hole provided for the purpose, either into channels made in a bed of sand, or into iron moulds, where it is cast into rough semi-cylindrical ma.s.ses, called pigs, where cast-iron is also spoken of as pig-iron.

"The temperature of the furnace is, of course, highest in the immediate neighbourhood of the tuyeres; the reduction of the iron to the metallic state appears to commence at about two thirds of the way down the furnace, the volatile matters of the ore, fuel, and flux being driven off before this point is reached.

"Some idea may be formed of the immense scale upon which the smelting of iron ores is carried out, when it is stated that each furnace consumes in the course of 24 hours about 50 tons of coal, 30 tons of ore, 6 tons of limestone, and 100 tons of air.

"The cast-iron is run off from the crucible once or twice in 12 hours, in quant.i.ties of 5 or 6 tons at a time. The average yield of calcined clay-iron stone is 35% of iron.

"The gases escaping from the chimney of the blast furnace are highly inflammable, for they contain, beside the nitrogen of the air blown into the furnace, a considerable quant.i.ty of carbonic oxide and some hydrogen, together with the carbonic acid formed by the action of the carbonic oxide upon the ore. Since the carbonic oxide and hydrogen confer considerable heating power upon these gases, they are employed in some iron-works for heating steam-boilers, or for calcining the ore, or for raising the temperature of the blast.

"The composition of the gas issuing from a hot blast furnace (fed with unc.o.ked coal) may be judged of from the following table:--

"_Gas from Blast Furnace._

Nitrogen 5535 vols.

Carbonic oxide 2597 "

Hydrogen 673 "

Carbonic acid 777 "

Marsh gas 375 "

Olefiant gas 043 "

-------- 10000 "

"The carbonic oxide of course renders these gases highly poisonous, and fatal accidents occasionally happen from this cause. Although the bulk of the nitrogen present in the air escapes unchanged from the furnace, it is not improbable that a portion of it contributes to the formation of the cyanide of pota.s.sium which is produced in the lower part of the furnace, the pota.s.sium being furnished by the ashes of the fuel." See METALLURGY.

_a.s.say._ Three general methods are adopted for this purpose:--

1. (MECHANICAL.) This consists in pulverising the ore by any convenient method, and expertly washing a given weight of it (say 1000 gr.) in a wooden bowl or capsule with water, so as to remove the earthy gangues from the denser and valuable metallic matter in such a way that none of the latter may be lost. This is the common plan adopted with auriferous sands, the ores of tin after they have pa.s.sed the stamping-mill, galena, grey antimony, &c., and may either be employed as an independent process or merely as preparatory to more exact investigations. When galena is thus tested, the product is a nearly pure sulphide of lead, of which every grain is equivalent to 8666 of metallic lead, the rest being sulphur. The results with grey antimony ore are still more direct, since the product is only melted into pigs before being sent to market. In this state it contains 73% (nearly) of metallic antimony.

2. (HUMID.) a.s.says in the 'humid way' are true chemical a.n.a.lyses, and are described under the head '_Estim._' attached to most of the more important minerals noticed in this work. This plan offers greater facilities and gives more accurate results than either of the other methods.

3. (DRY.) Of the methods of a.s.say in the 'dry way' the following are the most accurate, generally useful, and easily applied:--

_a._ (Dr Abiche.) The mineral is reduced to powder, and mixed with 5 or 6 times its weight of carbonate of barium, also in powder; this mixture is fused at a white heat in a platinum crucible, and the resulting slag, after being powdered, is exhausted with hydrochloric acid. This process answers well with both stony and metallic minerals, the most refractory of which give way under this treatment.

_b._ (Liebig.) Into a crucible containing commercial cyanide of pota.s.sium, a weighed quant.i.ty of the ore, in the state of fine powder, is sprinkled, when the metallic oxides and sulphides which it contains are almost immediately reduced to the metallic state, and may be separated from the scoria by edulcoration with water. With the oxides and sulphides of antimony and tin this reduction occurs at a dull red heat; with the compounds of copper it occurs with the disengagement of light and heat; but an ore of iron requires to be mixed with a little carbonate of pota.s.sium or of sodium before throwing it into the fused cyanide, and to be then submitted to a full red heat for a short time, before it is reduced to the reguline state. In this case any manganese present in the ore of iron is left under the form of protoxide. A mixture of about equal parts of dry carbonate of sodium and cyanide of pota.s.sium answers better for the crucible than the cyanide alone. See ALLOYS, METALLURGY, &c.; also PERCY'S METALLURGY.

=ORGAN'IC BA'SES.= These interesting bodies may be divided into two cla.s.ses: the first comprising those which occur ready formed in nature (ALKALOIDS); and the second those produced by artificial processes in the laboratory (ARTIFICIAL ALKALOIDS, ARTIFICIAL ORGANIC BASES). They all contain the element NITROGEN. The natural bases have already been described under ALKALOID. Hitherto they have none of them been produced by artificial means. The bases of artificial origin are mostly volatile, and their const.i.tution is much simpler than that of the native bases. Of the vast number which have been formed the following are, perhaps, the most interesting:--ETHYLAMINE, METHYLAMINE, AMYLAMINE, ANILINE, NAPHTHYLAMINE, CHINOLINE, and PICOLINE. These and other bodies of the cla.s.s are noticed under their respective heads.

By Berzelius the natural organic bases (owing to the invariable presence in them of hydrogen and nitrogen) were regarded as compound ammonias, or combinators of ammonia with a variety of neutral principles.

He conceived the greater part of these neutral bodies were incapable of isolation, and further more that the closest union existed between them and the ammonia. Thus it was his opinion that quinine C_{20}H_{12}NO_{2}, 3HO (halving the modern formula) was a compound of the group C_{20}H_{9}O_{2} with oxide of ammonium and water of crystallisation thus (C_{20}H_{9}O_{2}H_{4}NO)_{2}HO. He believed the organic base owed its basicity to the ammonia. Berzelius' opinion carried weight at the time, from the circ.u.mstance that certain neutral substances when directly combined with ammonia were capable of forming a number of artificial bases very similar in qualities and also in composition to the natural ones, or those obtained from living plants. Thus, the artificial base _thiosinamine_ having the formula C_{4}H_{5}NS is produced by the combination of oil of mustard and ammonia; and another base may be artificially obtained from the union of oil of bitter almonds with ammonia.

Liebig, who was one of the first chemists to dispute the correctness of Berzelius' hypothesis, by showing that the natural organic bases never gave any indication of the presence in them of ready formed ammonia, replaced it by the suggestion that they might be bodies into the composition of which amidogen (H_{2}N) entered, and that these, instead of being compounds of ammonia and an organic group, might be derivatives from ammonia; or ammonia in which an atom of hydrogen had been displaced by an equivalent organic radicle.

The labours of subsequent chemists, notably those of Messrs Wurtz and Hofman, have developed Liebig's theory, and have proved the a.n.a.logy in structural arrangement between ammonia and the greater number of organic bases; whilst they have further shown, not only in one, as supposed by Liebig, but for all three of the hydrogen atoms in ammonia, may be subst.i.tuted certain compound radicles.

=ORGAN'IC SUBSTANCES.= We have reserved a notice of the method of estimating the quant.i.ty of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in organic compounds, until now, in order to present them to the reader in a more useful and connected form. The operation essentially consists, in respect of the first three, in causing the complete combustion of a known quant.i.ty of the substance under examination, in such a manner that the carbonic acid and water thus produced shall be collected, and their quant.i.ty determined. From these the proportions of their elements are easily calculated. The estimation of the quant.i.ty of nitrogen (as is also the case with chlorine, phosphorus, sulphur, &c.) requires a separate operation. The two great cla.s.ses of organic bodies (azotised and non-azotised) are readily distinguished from each other by heating a small portion with some solid hydrate of pota.s.sium, in a test tube. If nitrogen is present, it is converted into ammonia, which may be recognised by its characteristic odour and its alkaline reaction.

1. _Estimation of the_ CARBON, HYDROGEN, _and_ OXYGEN.--_a._ The method of Prof. Liebig, now almost exclusively adapted for this purpose, is as follows:--The substance under examination, reduced to powder, is rendered as dry as possible, either by the heat of a water bath or by exposure over concentrated sulphuric acid, _in vacuo_; 5 or 6 gr. of it are then weighed in a narrow open test tube, 2 or 3 inches long, and to ensure accuracy this tube and any little adhering matter is again weighed after its contents have been removed--the difference between the two weights being regarded as the true quant.i.ty of the substance employed in the experiment.

A 'combustion tube,' of hard white Bohemian gla.s.s (4 to 5 inch diam.; 14 to 18 inches long), is next taken, and about 2-3rds filled with black oxide of copper, prepared by the ignition of the nitrate, and which has been just re-heated to expel hygrometric moisture. Nearly the whole of this oxide, whilst still warm, is then gradually poured from the tube and triturated with the organic sample in a dry and warm mortar, after which the mixture is transferred to the combustion tube, and the mortar being rinsed out with a little fresh oxide, which is added to the rest, the tube is, lastly, nearly filled with some warm oxide fresh from the crucible.

The contents of the tube are next arranged in a proper position by a few gentle blows, so as to leave a small pa.s.sage for the evolved gases from the one end of the tube to the other. (See _engr_.)