Artificial Fertilisers

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 5, 7 January 1936, Page 8

Artificial Fertilisers

LITTLE TO LEARN FROM U.S.A. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Jan. 6. After spending some time in America studying the manufacture of artificial fertilisers there, Mr Cassels Brown, superintendent of the Challenge Phosphate Co.’s works at Auckland, who returned by the Makura, claims that the Dominion manufacturers have little to learn from the United States. The destruction of weeds by chemicals is more advanced hero than in the United States, but he thought there were possibilities in the processing of phosphates by an electric furnace which were being experimented with there. He said it was frightful to see the way America had allowed areas to go to waste. Millions of tons of soil hal been washed out to sea by floods, and the only place where 1 jventive measures were being taken was in Tennessee Valley. Here a nitrate plant was built during the war but it is our. of date and modern powerhouses have been erected. Power is employed not for the manufacture of nitrates but for the heating of phosphate rock in the electric furnaces. The heat process produced a phosphoric acid, which in turn, was used instead of sulphuric acic for the treatment of phosphate rock. The process is still in the experimental stage and too expensive to be of commercial value, but he believed it could be made more economic and if so, would be of importance to New Zealand as it would do away with the importation of sulphur for tho manufacture of sulphuric acid used te make phosphate rock soluble.