New Vistas for Chemists

A simple process for taking the salts out of sea water, for the recovery of valuable metals dissolved in mine wastes, until recently seemed too good to be true. But such jobs have now been done in the laboratory with cheap synthetic resin (i.e., a "plastic") which can be recovered, used over & over. These "Amberlite" resins are now made in quantity by Resinous Products & Chemical Co. of Philadelphia under patents owned by the British Government. Not for years have chemists seen such a big new field of research opened. They have huge potential uses. Examples:

At Lodi, Calif, last month, Dr. John R. Matchett of the U.S. Department of Agriculture extracted 400 Ib. of tartrates from winery residues merely by running them through "Amberlite," thus opened the way for a possible 1943 production of 10,000,000 Ib. of tartaric acid.* In Idaho, beet sugar refiners are increasing sugar production, reducing by-product molasses with equal simplicity.

The process was born in 1935 when Basil Albert Adams and Eric Leighton Holmes of the British Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (which has no counterpart in the U.S.) prepared L, phenol-formaldehyde resin which was more useful for its chemical properties than as a plastic. When immersed in "hard" water, which contains salts of calcium, it entered an exchange: it took calcium atoms from the water, replaced them with sodium, thus softened the water.

This was not new, for natural "green-sands" and artificial zeolites have long been used for such softening. But a slightly more complex resin of the same type proved able to draw even sodium atoms out of solution, replace them with hydrogen. This merely substituted acid for salt, but still another resin, made with amines instead of phenol, extracted the acid intact, leaving pure water. Both resins were gradually used up but could be revived by reverse treatment with stronger solutions, /-

All salts can thus be taken out of any water solution. When the dissolved salts are small in amount, the process is cheaper than distillation. For strong solutions, such as sea water, distillation is cheaper, but the resins can be used where stills and heat for distillation are impossible. When valuable materials are thus taken out of water solution, they can be recovered by washing the resin.

Other applications awaiting the new process:

>Reduction of alkalinity in water for beverage plants, ice plants, municipal water supplies.

> Softening of hard water for laundries, canneries, textile mills, power plants.

> Removal of iron, copper and other metals in solution for tanneries, dye works, food industries, paper mills.

> Recovery of copper from rayon mill wastes, and of many metals from mine and industrial wastes.

>Removal of salts in the manufacture of sugar, dyes, drugs, enzymes, gelatin, chemicals.

> Removal of ammonia, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide from gas supplies.

* The need for tartaric acid is serious for munitions, baking powder, synthetic silk, photographic materials, candy. The U.S. requires at least 15,000,000 Ib. annually. Foreign sources of argols and lees (crusts and dregs) of winery wastes are cut off.

/- According to the "phase rule," detailed in Poetess Muriel Rukyser's recent biography of the late, great 19th-Century U.S. physicist Willard Gibbs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.