NITRATE MANUFACTURE

Northern Advocate, 17 February 1926, Page 3

NITRATE MANUFACTURE

| ANOTHER IX THE FIEU). BIG FACTORY TO BE ERECTED IN SYDNEY. EMPLOYMENT FOR .1000 WORKERS Ecently an account was published in these columns of a proposal to establish a hydro-eicc.trie plant at Doubtful Sound for the manufacture »of nitrates from the air. The syndicate who obtained the concession from the Government claimed that they would have the first nitrates factory in the Southern Hemisphere. If they want to do so they will have to hurry, because a Sydney concern is already taking steps to erect a nitrates factory capable of employing 3000 persons. The following article in a recent sisue of the Sydney "Morning Herald” gives the following details: — "This is a synthetic age. Chemists have produced artificial wool, silk, and other material; and there is no knowing what surprises the laboratories may have in store for us yet.

"The immense possibilities of chemistry are hardly realised by the ordinary person. Of all the achievements in recent times, few are’more astonishing than the extraction of nitrogen from the air and the turning of it, by various processes, into a commercial product, in which quite a brisk trade is being carried on in Europe at the pre-sent-time. "What gives particular interest to this business of the 'liquefaction of air, and the manufacture of nitrogen therefrom, is the fact that there is shortly to be erected an establishment for this purpose near Sydney. The land has already been purchased, and the German process rights acquired. It will be the first factory erected in the Southern Hemisphere for the artificial production of nitrogen compounds. The first unit of the factory will, it is employ 3000 persons, and the ultimate establishment of 10 units is designed. i

• “Attention was focussed when the war broke out on the problem of obtaining from the boundless stores of juneombined nitrogen in the atmosphere, by economic methods, those nitrogen compounds, principally ammonia and nitric acid, required for the 1 manufacture of explosives, as well as for the fertilising of food crops. One of Britain’s principal objects in blockading German ports was to cut off the supply of nitrates to the enemy. The methods for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen which German chemists had already perfected were then at once put into operation on a large scale, and Germany became self-jupporting in [ fixed nitrogen, otherwise her defeat would have been speedy and complete. “After the war the synthetic production of nitrogen compounds, which play so vital a part in the needs of agriculture and the useful arts, was put on a commercial basis, and there has since been great development of the industry in Europe, large factories being in operation in France, Belgium, Norway, Sweden and other countries, as well ns in Germany. “Combined nitrogen is a constituent of some of the most important chemical compounds in nature and industry. In addition to its functions in plant fertilisation, it is a constituent of explosives, enters into the composition of numerous dyes and of drugs, and has many other fields of application.

“The air over every square mile of surface of the. earth contains 20,000,000 tons of nitrogen a waiting' utilisation. ”