Trail, British Columbia

Betts An electrolytic process for refining lead and recovering silver and gold from it. The electrolyte is a solution of lead fluosilicate and hydiofluosilicic acid. The other metals collect as a slime on the anode and are retained there. Developed by A.G. Betts in 1901, first operated at Trail, British Columbia, in 1903, and now widely used in locations having cheap electric power. 

Heavy water [11105-15-0], D20, was produced by a combination of electrolysis and catalytic exchange reactions. Some nuclear reactors (qv) require heavy water as a moderator of neutrons. Plants for the production of heavy water were built by the U.S. government during Wodd War II. These plants, located at Trail, British Columbia, Moigantown, West Virginia, and Savannah River, South Carolina, have been shut down except for a portion of the Savannah River plant, which produces heavy water by a three-stage process (see Deuterium and tritium) an H2S/H2O exchange process produces 15% D20 a vacuum distillation increases the concentration to 90% D20 an electrolysis system produces 99.75% D20 (58). 

The other author (WGD) has been interested in sulfuric acid plants since his 1957 student internship at Cominco s lead/zinc smelter in Trail, British Columbia. Cominco was making sulfuric acid from lead and zinc roaster offgases at that time. It was also making ammonium sulfate fertilizer. 

Nevertheless, both hazardous and inert residues are solid wastes and require landfill. Dumping solid waste to landfill, even non-hazardous clean wastes, is not sustainable and is not entirely green . An ideal green technology is one that consumes all materials involved in the production process to produce only re-useable or new products, without generating solid waste that requires disposal to landfill. Such smelters can be found in Trail, British Columbia, Canada at the Cominco lead and zinc primary smelter and in Malaysia in Kuala Lmnpur at the Metal Reclamation primary and secondary lead smelter [21]. 

Because the cost of producing heavy water is roughly inversely proportional to the deuterium content of plant feed, local variations are of major economic importance. The low deuterium content of the Columbia River at Trail, British Columbia, 0.0133 percent, made the cost of producing heavy water at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission s (AEC) plant at this location higher than if the Columbia River had been as rich in deuterium as the Niagara or the Nile, for example. 

At the Manhattan District s heavy-water plant at Trail, British Columbia, primary concentration of deuterium was effected by the combination of electrolysis and steam-hydrogen... 

The electrolytic process was also used by the Manhattan District, at Morgantown, West Virginia, and at Trail, British Columbia [M8], to refine crude heavy water from a primary plant where some process other than electrolysis was employed. These electrolytic plants were operated batchwise. The cells had no diaphragm, so the product was a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. The gases were recombined in a burner, and the water was recycled to the primary plant when its deuterium content was leaner than primary-plant product or to the next batch of the electrolytic plant when its deuterium content was richer than primary-plant product,... 

The original Toxco facility near Trail, British Columbia began as a 33,000 square foot warehouse on 11 acres of land. Only 15,000 square feet was used as battery processing and the rest remained storage space. This facility has since grown to over... 

Research and Bench-Scale Feasibility Studies. The reaction between carbon and sulfur dioxide at elevated temperatures is well known and has been used for numerous processes. For example, sulfur was produced at Trail, British Columbia from 1935 to 1943 by blowing sulfur dioxide and oxygen into the bottom of a coke-fired reduction furnace. Coke was charged at the top and ash was removed on a rotary grate at the bottom of the furnace. The hot zone of the furnace was kept at 1300°C to maintain rapid reaction rates and smooth operation. Sufficient sulfur dioxide was added to the gas to react with the carbon monoxide and carbon oxysulfide contained in the reduction furnace off-gas. Coal was con-... 

Hilts SR, Pan UW, Wh ite ER and Yates CL (1995) Trail Lead Program Exposure Pathways Investigations. Pinal Report, Trail, British Columbia, Canada Trail Community Lead Task Porce. 

At about that point from 1942 to 1943, I was given a special project to design and start-up a heavy water separation plant in Trail, British Columbia. I didn t have much faith that they would get this job done in time for the war. The work was extra confidential. One of the techniques we used involved a layer of catalyst between every two bubble trays. You had to get heavy water in the right phase—it resembled distillation. 

J.A. Gonzalez Cominco Research P.O. Box 2000 Trail, British Columbia Canada V1R4S4... 

D. Magoon Cominco Limited Trail, British Columbia Canada V1R4L8... 

Qingxia Liu Comineo Researeh. Comineo Ltd., Trail, British Columbia, Canada... 

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