MANGANESE COMPOUNDS
The raw material of the manganese industry is hausmannite (manganese dioxide, MnO₂). This is subjected to a crushing process, sorted, sieved, finely ground, washed, and dried. The pure finely ground manganese dioxide is much used in the chemical industry, especially in the recovery of chlorine in the Weldon process and in the production of potassium permanganate, which is obtained by melting manganese dioxide with caustic soda and potassium chlorate or nitre, lixiviation and introduction of carbonic acid, or better by treatment with ozone.
Manganese is also used in the production of colours: the natural and artificial umbers contain it; in glass works it is used to decolourise glass, and also in the production of coloured glass and glazes; in the manufacture of stove tiles, and in the production of driers for the varnish and oil industry. Manganese and compounds of manganese are dangerous when absorbed into the system as dust.
Already in 1837 nervous disorders had been described in workmen who ground manganese dioxide.[1] The malady was forgotten, until Jaksch[2] in Prague in 1901 demonstrated several such cases in persons employed in a large chemical factory in Bohemia, from the drying of Weldon mud. In the same year three similar cases were also described in Hamburg.[3] In 1902 Jaksch observed a fresh case of poisoning, and in the factory in question described a condition of manganophobia among the workers, obviously hysterical, in which symptoms of real manganese poisoning were simulated. In all some twenty cases are known. Jaksch is of opinion that it is manganese dust rich in manganese protoxide that is alone dangerous, since, if the mud has been previously treated with hydrochloric acid, by which the lower oxides are removed, no illness can be found. The most dangerous compounds are MnO and Mn₃O₄.
PETROLEUM
Occurrence and Uses.—Crude petroleum flows spontaneously from wells in consequence of high internal pressure of gas or is pumped up. In America and Russia also it is conveyed hundreds of miles in conduits to the ports to be led into tank steamers.
The crude oil is a dark-coloured liquid which, in the case of Pennsylvanian mineral oil, consists mainly of a mixture of hydrocarbons of the paraffin series, or, in Baku oil, of those of the naphtha series. There are in addition sulphur compounds, olefines, pyridin, &c. The crude oil is unsuitable for illuminating purposes and is subjected to a distillation process. It is split up into three fractions by a single distillation, namely, (a) benzines (boiling-point 150° C.), (b) lighting oil (boiling-point 150°-300° C.); at a temperature of 300° C. the distillation is stopped so that (c) the residuum boiling above 300° C. remains. Distillation is effected (in America) in large stills, in which periodically benzine and lighting oil up to 300° C. is distilled and the residuum run off. In Baku continuously working batteries of so-called cylindrical boilers are used, into which the crude oil streams. In the first set of boilers, the temperature in which rises to 150° C., the benzine is distilled off, and in the succeeding ones, heated to 300° C., the illuminating petroleum oils (kerosine), the residuum flowing continually away.
The mineral oil residues are used as fuel. Heating by this means, tried first only in Russia, is spreading, especially for the heating of boilers, in which case the liquid fuel is blown in generally as a spray. The combustion if rightly planned is economical and almost smokeless.
The American oil residuum, rich in paraffin, is distilled, the distillate is cooled and separated by pressure into solid paraffin and liquid oil. The latter and the Russian mineral oil residues which are free from paraffin are widely used as lubricants. In the production of lubricants the residues are distilled at low temperature (in vacuo or by aid of superheated steam) and separated into various qualities by fractional cooling, are then purified with sulphuric acid, and finally washed with caustic soda solution.
In the preparation of vaseline the residum is not distilled, but purified only with fuming sulphuric acid and decolourised with animal charcoal.