(4) Precipitation may be effected with potassium iodate in strong nitric acid solution. Here also ceric salts must be reduced before applying the test. Zirconium also gives the test; the precipitate must therefore be washed and warmed with oxalic acid, in which thorium iodate is insoluble, whilst zirconium iodate is soluble.
The methods of estimating thorium are given in [Chapter XVIII].
PART III
THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE ELEMENTS
CHAPTER XVII
THE INCANDESCENT MANTLE INDUSTRY—HISTORICAL AND GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The group of elements which we are considering can be divided, from the point of view of technical application, into two classes. The first of these contains one element only, titanium, which in its technology, as in its chemistry, stands apart from the others; it will, accordingly, be treated in a separate chapter. The second class contains the yttrium and cerium metals, with zirconium and thorium; the technical importance of these elements is due chiefly to the use of their oxides in illumination, to a small extent in Nernst lamps, and to a much greater extent in the so-called Incandescent Lighting. The manufacture of incandescent mantles[487] is a large and ever-extending industry, intimately bound up with the older process of coal-distillation, with its innumerable ramifications; indeed, it may be said that but for the ingenious invention of Dr. Auer, illumination by means of coal-gas would to-day have been almost obsolete. The discovery which resulted in the production of the familiar incandescent mantle of the present day may be regarded as the culmination of a century’s effort to increase the value of coal-gas as an illuminating agent. In the present chapter it is proposed to outline the history of these endeavours, and to give a short general account of Auer’s work and its results.
[487] The term ‘incandescent mantle’ is not, perhaps, scientifically very desirable. It is used here, not only on account of its general acceptance, but also because there seems to be no brief and convenient term which might be used in its stead.
Soon after the introduction of gas as an illuminating agent it was realised that the luminosity of the flame is dependent on the presence of solid particles, which by the heat of combustion of the gas are raised to a temperature at which they emit radiations of wave-lengths corresponding to the ‘luminous rays’ of the spectrum. A non-luminous flame of sufficiently high temperature, therefore, can be rendered luminous by the introduction of suitable solids, and numberless investigators have striven, during the past century, to discover the most suitable method of increasing the luminosity of a flame in this way. The luminosity of the ordinary ‘bats-wing’ or ‘flat’ flame, now so rapidly going out of use, is due to the presence in the outer zone of the flame of heated particles of carbon, produced by the decomposition—or partial combustion—of ‘dense’ hydrocarbons, i.e. of hydrocarbons having a high percentage of carbon. Ordinary coal-gas consists largely of a mixture of hydrogen and methane, both of which burn with practically non-luminous flames, with small quantities of olefines, acetylenes, etc., to which the luminosity is chiefly due. It would appear, then, that by the introduction of dense hydrocarbons, a gas of poor illuminating power might be made much more valuable as a source of light. On the other hand, it is also apparent that the same end might be achieved by the introduction into a non-luminous or feebly luminous flame of an altogether foreign substance, introduced as such, and not continuously consumed, as is the carbon in the former method. Both these directions of improvement have been followed; since, however, the results achieved by the latter method have become recently of far greater importance, the applications of the first method will be dismissed quite briefly, and the history of the second will then be treated somewhat fully.
The first important attempt to increase the illuminating power of gases burning with feebly luminous flames was that of Faraday, who in the course of an investigation into the causes of the variations in luminosity of ‘portable gas,’ discovered benzene, or bicarburet of hydrogen, as he called it, in 1826. In 1830 an engineer named Dunnovan undertook to illuminate Dublin by means of water-gas[488] which he ‘carburised’ by addition of dense hydrocarbons. During the latter half of the nineteenth century this method became of some importance. It has been applied, in particular, to enrich the ‘natural gas’ of Ohio, North America. The dense hydrocarbons necessary for this purpose are obtained by the process known as ‘cracking.’ The viscous residues from the distillation of the mineral oil of the district are allowed to drop into a brick chamber, of which the walls are raised to a bright red heat, and the dense hydrocarbons which are evolved are removed by a current of the gas to be enriched. In this way a gas of relatively high illuminating power is obtained.
[488] Water-gas is a mixture of equal volumes of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, obtained by blowing steam through a glowing coke furnace. At intervals the steam is shut off, and air is blown through to raise the temperature of the coke.