Courtesy of Hercules Powder Co.
OVERHEAD SUCTION AT THE SAN DIEGO WHARF PUMPING KELP FROM THE BARGE TO THE DIGESTION TANKS
The tourist going through Wyoming on the Union Pacific will have to the north of him what is marked on the map as the "Leucite Hills." If he looks up the word in the Unabridged that he carries in his satchel he will find that leucite is a kind of lava and that it contains potash. But he will also observe that the potash is combined with alumina and silica, which are hard to get out and useless when you get them out. One of the lavas of the Leucite Hills, that named from its native state "Wyomingite," gives fifty-seven per cent. of its potash in a soluble form on roasting with alunite—but this costs too much. The same may be said of all the potash feldspars and mica. They are abundant enough, but until we find a way of utilizing the by-products, say the silica in cement and the aluminum as a metal, they cannot solve our problem.
Since it is so hard to get potash from the land it has been suggested that we harvest the sea. The experts of the United States Department of Agriculture have placed high hopes in the kelp or giant seaweed which floats in great masses in the Pacific Ocean not far off from the California coast. This is harvested with ocean reapers run by gasoline engines and brought in barges to the shore, where it may be dried and used locally as a fertilizer or burned and the potassium chloride leached out of the charcoal ashes. But it is hard to handle the bulky, slimy seaweed cheaply enough to get out of it the small amount of potash it contains. So efforts are now being made to get more out of the kelp than the potash. Instead of burning the seaweed it is fermented in vats producing acetic acid (vinegar). From the resulting liquid can be obtained lime acetate, potassium chloride, potassium iodide, acetone, ethyl acetate (used as a solvent for guncotton) and algin, a gelatin-like gum.
PRODUCTION OF POTASH IN THE UNITED STATES
| 1916 | 1917 | |||
| Source | Tons K2O | Per cent. of total production | Tons K2O | Per cent. of total production |
| Mineral sources: | ||||
| Natural brines | 3,994 | 41.1 | 20,652 | 63.4 |
| Altmite | 1,850 | 19.0 | 2,402 | 7.3 |
| Dust from cement mills | 1,621 | 5.0 | ||
| Dust from blast furnaces | 185 | 0.6 | ||
| Organic Sources: | ||||
| Kelp | 1,556 | 16.0 | 3,752 | 10.9 |
| Molasses residue from distillers | 1,845 | 19.0 | 2,846 | 8.8 |
| Wood ashes | 412 | 4.2 | 621 | 1.9 |
| Waste liquors from beet-sugar refineries | 369 | 1.1 | ||
| Miscellaneous industrial wastes | 63 | .7 | 305 | 1.0 |
| Total | 9,720 | 100.0 | 32,573 | 100.0 |
—From U S. Bureau of Mines Report, 1918.
This table shows how inadequate was the reaction of the United States to the war demand for potassium salts. The minimum yearly requirements of the United States are estimated to be 250,000 tons of potash.
This completes our survey of the visible sources of potash in America. In 1917 under the pressure of the embargo and unprecedented prices the output of potash (K2O) in various forms was raised to 32,573 tons, but this is only about a tenth as much as we needed. In 1918 potash production was further raised to 52,135 tons, chiefly through the increase of the output from natural brines to 39,255 tons, nearly twice what it was the year before. The rust in cotton and the resulting decrease in yield during the war are laid to lack of potash. Truck crops grown in soils deficient in potash do not stand transportation well. The Bureau of Animal Industry has shown in experiments in Aroostook County, Maine, that the addition of moderate amounts of potash doubled the yield of potatoes.
Professor Ostwald, the great Leipzig chemist, boasted in the war: