ARTIFICIAL FERTILISERS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 12752, 7 January 1936, Page 2

ARTIFICIAL FERTILISERS

LESSONS FROM AMERICAN VISIT. PHOSPHORIC ACID BY HEAT PROCESS, (Press Association-v WELLINGTON, Jan. C.

Alter spending nomc 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 bv the Makura, claim: that Dominion manufacturers have little' to learn from the United States.

He found that the processes of destruction of weeds by chemicals was more advanced in New Zealand than in the United States, but h e thought there were possibilities in the processing of phosphates by electric furnaces which was being experimented with in America.

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. -There a nitrate plant was . built during the Great War, but it was now out of date and modern power-houses, had been erected. 'The power was employed, not for the manufacture of nitrates, hut for treating phosphate rock in electric furnaces. The heat process produced phosphoric acid which, in turn, was imed instead of sulphuric acid for the treatment of phosphate rock.

The process was still in the experimental stage and seemed too expensive to be of eomereial value, but ho belit'fc'Ctli it could he made more economical and, if so, it would he of importance to New Zealand, as it would do away with the importation of sulphur for the manufacture of sulphate acid, used to make the phosphate rock soluble.