ALUMINIUM DISCOVERY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XI, Issue 17, 5 January 1921, Page 7

ALUMINIUM DISCOVERY.

WHAT A SCIEMIST HAS FOUND. A feat that scientists have been predicting tor years and years lias been accoii’.piklied—a, method has been discovered for separating aluminium from i clay. It has long been known that i many day deposits were rich in a'.u- ; minium, nut lor decades mineralogists ’ have experimented in a. vain attempt ■ to discover .son;c economical method i oi extracting Ui- e rich deposits di j aluminium wnicb were going io waste ; because of tneir inaccessibility. I p to tins time bauxite lias been i the only available source of aluminiumaiidior every ton of bauxite in the earth there are a billion tons of kaolin { or e ay containing aluminium. Thus it is easy to see what it means ! suddenly to be able to use all this I alumiiiiuin-filied day, how it will bring i down prices, and how it will revo'.u | tiomse tno aluminium industry and I various allied industries. J lie genius who has made this epoch- ' making discovery is, according to the ■ “Tree Press” of Detroit, Dr. G- L j \\ illiams, an American born, lie ob- j taiued much of his training in Germany I and some of his experience, having been ‘ employed in large chemical plants in : t mil country atone time. By trade he i is an electro-chemical engineer. Well-known business men of Detroit • have interested themselves in the dis- ; covery. and, having found the capital, ' bought a large factory, belonging to the Government, which had been used for making powder. The plant has non been converted for the production of aluminium from kaolin. They- have also bought up largo tracts of ’.and in Georgia- which are rich in the proper-

kind of clay The company has had to take out patents in all to cover each step of the process for separating aluminium from the clay. But aluminium is not to be the only product of the stonishing process developed by Dr. Williams. In the very breaking of th-, bond between the aluminium and the clay, when Dr. Williams lixes the nitrogen of the air with the hydrogen of water, clay, and coal, ammonia is produced. . Though this is merely a by-product, its va'.ue is inestimable. It means cheaper ammonia, for by this new process from every ten pounds of original material Dr. ' Williams gets an equa*. amount of ammonia out of the free air, while heretofore it used to take a ton of coal to produce thirty pounds of ammonia. It is fully predicted here that the doctor’s discovery will revolutionise the metal world.