Political and commercial geology and the world's mineral resources

by Unknown

The industrial output is built up as a sequence to industrial concentration. This is evidenced all down the line, notably in the output of coke-oven ammonia from the steel industry and in that of organic ammoniates from the meat-packing industry. It is this influence of co-ordinated industrial concentration, along with the call for the major operations, that controls the supply of by-product nitrogen; so the development and handling of the industrial output comes naturally to be largely in the hands of trade combinations. Thus, the coal-product ammonia situation is largely at the disposal of the Barrett Co., the tankage and other animal-product ammoniates gather for disposal at the hands of the packing interests, and the nitrogenous fertilizers from cottonseed are for the most part prepared and marketed by interests subsidiary to the Cotton Oil Co.

The manufacturing interests involved are concerned primarily in the manufacture of other than nitrogen products. The by-product nitrogen recovered has to compete for its market against what comes from the other two industrial classes of supply, and its price goes just low enough to enable it to do so. The limits set in the incidental character of the output leave no special incentive to carry the price competition further. Whatever additional latitude of advantage as to cost of production it possesses goes not to promoting a further reduction in the price of nitrogen but to lowering costs with reference to the major theme of production. Gas-house ammonia, for instance, does not affect the nitrogen market so much as it does the cost of gas, and the organic ammoniates recovered in connection with meat packing have not lowered fertilizer costs so much as they have kept down the cost of meat to the consumer. Thus the by-product class of supply, though the leading one in the point of magnitude, and by far the cheapest to produce, has little to do with determining the price of nitrogen. The selling price of by-product nitrogen is determined by the price the product from competing sources brings. In this country it is controlled by the price of Chile nitrate, and not, as commonly imputed, by the trade combinations that develop and handle the output.

Fixation Compounds.

—Nitrogen has five general habits of combination: with oxygen, giving rise to nitric acid and its retinue of nitrate salts; with hydrogen, giving ammonia and the ammonium salts; with carbon, to form cyanogen and the cyanides; with basic elements, yielding nitrides; and organically, in the form of organic ammoniates. Various projects have been advanced for turning these to account in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. For the most part they have met with little or no practical success, but there are exceptions to the rule of failure in all five directions.

Direct Oxidation—Arc Fixation.

—Nitrogen does not oxidize at all readily under any ordinary conditions, but its natural indisposition to combine with oxygen may be overcome by passing a mixture of the two gases through an electric arc. The atmosphere furnishes the nitrogen and oxygen ready mixed, so all that is needed in the way of raw materials is an abundant power supply. Arc fixation was developed in Norway, where the possibilities in the way of hydro-electric power give the best setting to be found anywhere in the world. Efforts to introduce it elsewhere have resulted unsatisfactorily, and arc fixation has made relatively little headway, as may be deduced from [Table 66] and [Figure 18]. The reason is two-fold. So far, its use of power has proved uneconomical, and its product unsatisfactory. The former of these two objections depends for its force on the demand for power, but the latter is more decisive. The immediate end product is nitric acid, which is both difficult to transport and limited as to use. To be put in shape for agricultural use it must be neutralized in the form of a nitrate salt. Limestone is the only cheap neutralizing agent. This gives a salt, calcium nitrate, which absorbs moisture, cakes, and is thus unsuited to the American agricultural practice of machine drilling. An experimental plant near Seattle, Wash., aims to overcome this difficulty by turning out its arc product in the form of sodium nitrate, but the project is of no commercial significance as it stands.

Ammonia Fixation.

—Nitrogen is no more disposed to combine of its own accord with hydrogen to give ammonia than with oxygen to give nitric acid. In the case of the Haber process, the only synthetic ammonia process that has stood the test of industrial application, the native indisposition to combine is overcome by subjecting a properly proportioned mixture of the two gases to heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyzer. This process was instituted in Germany shortly before the outbreak of the war, and as shown in [Figure 16] and [Table 66] has developed steadily since then. Little seems to be known as to the efficiency of the German Haber practice. Apparently, careful manipulation is necessary to obtain results. This means a skilled attention, which is incompatible with mechanical volume production and is thus unsuited to American practice. What aims to be an adaptation to American conditions was worked out by the General Chemical Co., and a plant with a rated capacity of 60,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia per day was projected at Sheffield, Ala., at the instance of the Government. The plant was completed, but before it could be tuned up for actual production the war ended.

Cyanide Fixation.

—Nitrogen, in passing through a red-hot mixture of finely divided soda ash, coke, and iron, reacts with the sodium and carbon to give sodium cyanide. This principle of fixation is being extensively experimented with, but has not been developed commercially, except in a small plant with a rated daily capacity of 10 tons of sodium cyanide at Saltville, Va.