Potash American

Producers have developed specific cell configurations to optimise electricity consumption, cell capital, and operating costs. Pacific Engineering Corp., Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp., Chedde Pechiney, Cardox Corp., Electrochemie Turgi, American Potash and Chemical, and I. G. Earbenindustrie each has a unique cell design. 

North American Chemical Co. produces borax pentahydrate and decahydrate from Seades Lake brines in both Trona and West End, California (see Chemicals frombrines). The 88 km dry lake consists of two brine layers, the analyses of which are given in Table 11. Two distinct procedures are used for the processing of upper and lower lake brines. Borax is produced in Trona from upper lake brines by an evaporative procedure involving the crystallization of potash and several other salts prior to borax crystallization as the pentahydrate (104). A carbonation process is used in West End, California to derive borate values from lower lake brines (105). Raw lower stmcture brine is carbonated to produce sodium bicarbonate, which is calcined and recrystallized as sodium carbonate monohydrate. The borate-rich filtrate is neutralized with lake brine and refrigerated to crystallize borax. 

Garside, J. and Jancic, S.J., 1976. Growth and dissolution of potash alum crystals in the sub-sieve size range. American Institution of Chemical Engineers Journal, 22, 887. 

But not all the potash, kelp, and barilla in Europe and North America could keep up with the cotton textile factories of Britain and France. France was in a particularly dire situation. Even under normal conditions, her natural sources of alkali were insufficient. Then France supported the American War of Independence, and British ships cut off the French supply of American potash. With gunpowder and textile industries dependent on potash, France had to find a way to make artificial alkali. 

Prieto, M. A. et al., Research on the Stabilisation and Characterisation of Highly Concentrated Perchloric Acid, 36, Whittier, Calif., American Potash and Chem. Corp., 1962... 

The purest grade of europium metal available from the Lindsay Chemical Division of American Potash is 99.9% Eu in terms of rare earth content, but it may contain up to 1% of other metal impurities (mainly tantalum when prepared in tantalum vessels) and typically contains 2.8 mol % oxygen.6... 

Hatchett fused the ore with potassium carbonate. When he took up the melt with boiling water, a brown residue remained. When nitric acid was added to the yellow filtrate, a copious white precipitate was thrown down. The preceding experiments shew, said he, that the ore which has been analyzed consists of iron combined with an unknown substance and that the latter constitutes more than three fourths of the whole. This substance is proved to be of a metallic nature by the coloured precipitates which it forms with prussiate of potash and with tincture of galls by the effects which zinc produces when immersed in the acid solutions and by the colour which it communicates. .. to concrete phosphoric acid, when melted with it. . . . He mentioned that it retained oxygen tenaciously and that the oxide was acidic. Although the specimen Hatchett analyzed was very small, he hoped to get more soon from a gentleman now in England (Mr. Smith, Secretary to the American Philosophical Society). This was evidently Thomas P. Smith, who died in 1802 (53). 

Potash was made on a small scale in New England in the seventeenth century, and for two centuries American potash and pearlash, made by burning wood and leaching the ashes, were shipped to European countries, with incalculable loss to American agriculture (50). 

In 1811 the Irish-American chemist William James MacNeven published in the American Philosophical and Medical Register an article on the decomposition of potash in which he described the preparation of... 

Arfwedson fused the chrysoberyl three times with caustic potash in a silver crucible. Since a portion of the melt corresponding to about 18 per cent of the mineral failed to dissolve in hydrochloric acid, he reported this residue as silica. It is now known that beryllium hydroxide, when freshly precipitated, dissolves readily in hydrochloric acid, but becomes after a time almost completely insoluble in it (17). Therefore, it is probable that Arfwedson s silica was really the beryllium hydroxide. He then precipitated the alumina by adding ammonium hydroxide to the acid filtrate. To satisfy himself of the purity of his alumina, he saturated the alkaline solution with hydrochloric acid until the precipitate dissolved, and added a large excess of ammonium carbonate. Had any glucina [beryllia] or yttria existed in the matter, said Arfwedson, it would have been dissolved by this excess of carbonate of ammonia, and would have fallen when the filtered liquid was boiled till the excess of ammonia was driven off but the liquid stood this test without any precipitate appearing. Arfwedson was evidently unable to detect beryllia here because he had already filtered it off and reported it as silica. When American chemist Henry Seybert analyzed the same mineral in 1824 he found it to contain 15 to 16 per cent of beryllia (22). 

William Francis Hillebrand, 1853-1925. Chemist with the U. S. Geological Survey, later Chief Chemist at the Bureau of Standards. President of the American Chemical Society in 1906. Author of The Analysis of Silicate and Carbonate Rocks." He was the first to suggest the possibility of recovering potash from the fumes from cement kilns. 

Thomas H. Norton, 1851-1941. Professor of chemistry at the University of Cincinnati. American consul at Harput, Turkey, at Smyrna, and at Chemnitz, Saxony Author of books on dyes, the cottonseed industry, potash production, and the utilization of atmospheric nitrogen Collaborator with W. F. Hille-brand in researches on cenum (46, 49). 

American Potash Chemical Corp., Los Angeles, Calif., Bull. Dec. 14. 

The purified product is called white refined potash, and also pearlash. Some samples of American potash are reported to the following composition ... 

Mallinckrodt analytical reagent grade ether, dried over sodium, was used. The methyl borate was the commercial product of American Potash and Chemical Corporation containing 99% ester as received. The phenylmagnesium bromide was purchased as a 3.0M solution in ether from Arapahoe Special Products, Inc., Boulder, Colorado. 

American Potash and Chemical Corporation, Whittier, California. 

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