TREATING PHOSPHATE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 71, 6 January 1936, Page 6

TREATING PHOSPHATE.

NEW PROCESS IN AMERICA. ELECTRIC FURNACE USED. (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. After spending some time in America studying the manufacture of artificial fertilisers there, Mr Casscls Brown (superintendent of the Challenge Phosphate Company's works at Auckland), who returned by the Makura, claims that manufacturers in the Dominion have little to learn from the United States. The destruction of weeds by chemicals is more advanced here than in the States, but he thought there were possibilities in the processing of phosphates by electric furnace, which is being experimented with there. He said it was frightful to see the way America had allowed areas to waste. Millions of tons of soil had' been washed out to sea by floods, and the only place where preventive measures were being taken was in the Tennessee Valley. A nitrate plant was built in the Tennessee Valley during the war, but it was out of date, and modern powerhouses had been erected. The power was employed, not for the manufacture of nitrates, but for treating phosphate rock in electric furnaces. The heat process produced phosphoric acid, which in turn was used instead of sulphuric acid for the treatment of phosphate rock. The process was still in the experimental stage, and was too expensive to be of commercial value, but he believed it could be made more economic, and, if so, it Avould be of importance to New Zealand, as it would do away with the importation of sulphur for the manufacture of sulphuric acid used to make phosphate rock soluble.