THE HUNTINGTON-HEBERLEIN PROCESS
(July 6, 1905)
It is a fact, not generally known, that the American Smelting and Refining Company is now preparing to introduce the Huntington-Heberlein process in all its plants, this action being the outcome of extensive experimentation with the process. It is contemplated to employ the process not only for the desulphurization of all classes of lead ore, but also of mattes. This is a tardy recognition of the value of a process which has been before the metallurgical profession for nine years, the British patent having been issued under date of April 16, 1896, and has already attained important use in several foreign countries; but it will be the grandest application in point of magnitude.
The Huntington-Heberlein is the first of a new series of processes which effect the desulphurization of galena on an entirely new principle and at great advantage over the old method of roasting. They act at a comparatively low temperature, so that the loss of lead and silver is reduced to insignificant proportion; they eliminate the sulphur to a greater degree; and they deliver the ore in the form of a cinder, which greatly increases the smelting speed of the blast furnace. They constitute one of the most important advances in the metallurgy of lead. The roasting process has been the one in which least progress has been made, and it has remained a costly and wasteful step in the treatment of sulphide ores. In reducing upward of 2,500,000 tons of ore per annum, the American Smelting and Refining Company is obliged to roast upward of 1,000,000 tons of ore and matte.
The Huntington-Heberlein process was invented and first applied at Pertusola, Italy. It has since been introduced in Germany, Spain, Great Britain, Mexico, British Columbia, Tasmania, and Australia, in the last at the Port Pirie works of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company. Efforts were made to introduce it in the United States at least five years ago, without success and with little encouragement. The only share in this metallurgical improvement that this country can claim is that Thomas Huntington, one of the inventors, is an American citizen, Ferdinand Heberlein, the other, being a German.