SILVER MACHINERY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17436, 7 April 1931, Page 7

SILVER MACHINERY

USE EXTENDED INDUSTRIAL CHEMICAL PLANT LONDON, Feb. 10. The suggestion that machinery and apparatus made of pure silver could with advantage be used in various industries would only a few years ago have seemed impracticable. But now that the price of silver is* so low its employment in industrial chemical plant is reaching appreciable dimensions, and pieces of apparatus weighing up to three or four hundredweight have been and are being made in Britain from the pure metal. Until recently silver was classified as bullion, a notable metal, whose proper'place was inside jewellers' shops, and whose sole commercial use, apart from currency, was that of ornament. ' But its fall in value has brought it within the reach of ordinary consumers, and enabled it to take its place among the economic metals.

Most of the industrial chemical plant made of silver has so far been used for handling acids, especially in factories in which food is prepared and canned for human consumption. • Fine silver stills and condensers and silver alloy taps and cocks are largely employed. In the milk, cider, and brewery trades it is used for syphons, pipe lines, pasteurising coils, and the muzzles of tilling machines. In the manufacture of • acetate rayon silk, tine .silver condensers are used iu the recovery of solvents. The extending use of 'silver apparatus in these and other processes shews that the metal really has properties valuable enough to .counterbalance its still relatively high cost, and that eo.st is considerably discounted by a high scrap value. Scrap silver is always sure of a-ready sale, and the salvage value of silver apparatus varies from 50 per tfent. to 7". per cent, of its original cost.