Kellner, Karl

Watts work laid the foundation for the current electrolysis method used to produce sodium hydroxide. This method was developed independently during the 1880s by the American chemist Hamilton Young Castner (1858- 1899) and the Austrian chemist Karl Kellner (1850-1905). Castner left Columbia University before graduating and developed a method to produce sodium more economically for use in the aluminum industry. Until the late 1800s, aluminum was considered a precious metal because it was difficult to obtain it in... 

Castner, Hamilton Young — (Sep. 11, 1858, Brooklyn, New York, USA - Oct. 11,1899, Saranac Lake, New York, USA) Castner studied at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and at the School of Mines of Columbia University. He started as an analytical chemist, however, later he devoted himself to the design and the improvement of industrial chemical processes. He worked on the production of charcoal, and it led him to investigate the Devilles aluminum process. He discovered an efficient way to produce sodium in 1886 which made also the production of aluminum much cheaper. He could make aluminum on a substantial industrial scale at the Oldbury plant of The Aluminium Company Limited founded in England. However, - Hall and - Heroult invented their electrochemical process which could manufacture aluminum at an even lower price, and the chemical process became obsolete. Castner also started to use electricity, which became available and cheap after the invention of the dynamo by - Siemens in 1866, and elaborated the - chlor-alkali electrolysis process by using a mercury cathode. Since Karl Kellner (1851-1905) also patented an almost identical procedure, the process became known as Castner-Kellner process. Cast-... 

Castner-Kellner process A process once used to produce chlorine and sodium hy-droxidebythe electrolysis of sodium chloride solution. The electrolysis took place in a cell with a mercury cathode and graphite anode. The cell consisted of three compartments with a common bed of mercury and solution of sodium chloride above. The cathode was in the central com partment and anodes in the other two. It was invented independently by American industrial chemist Hamilton Young Castner (1858-99), who was working in the UK at the time, and Austrian chemical engineer Karl Kellner (1851-1905). The process was abandoned due to concerns over mercury pollution and replaced by various diaphragm-based electrolytic processes. 

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