tools at present worked by hand, or for a goods locomotive of 2,000 HP., such as is now being used at Baltimore. This utilization of energy at a distance is reinstating many home industries, to the great advantage of the working classes, whose time is wasted in long excursions to the factory, and whose health, morals and well-being are not improved by herding in great numbers and by incessant association with the grievance-monger and the professional agitator. CONCLUSION. I have touched lightly-I fear too lightly-upon some of the applications of electricity. I have confined myself, in a very general sense, to those with which I have been personally associated. I have shown how electricity began its beneficent career by protecting our lives and property from the disastrous effects of Nature's dread artillery, how it facilitates intercommunication between mind and mind by economizing time and annihilating space. It By its metallic nerves it brings into one fold not only the scattered families of one nation, but all countries and all languages, to the manifest promotion of peace and general goodwill. Not only does it show us how to utilize the waste energies of Nature, but it enables us to direct them to the place where they are most wanted and to use them with the greatest economy. It opens to our view Nature's secret storehouses, presenting us with new elements, new facts and new treasures. It economizes labour and purifies material. It lightens our darkness in more senses than one, and by enabling us to see the unseen, it tends to aid the gentle healing art and to alleviate both suffering and pain. It aids us in the pursuit of truth, and it has exploded the doctrine that the pursuit of truth means the destruction of faith. I have occupied your time sufficiently I hope to impress upon you the universality of electricity. Its flood-gates were opened when our good Queen ascended the throne, and during her glorious reign it has overflown all the fields cultivated by the engineer. Though its followers are now regarded as specialists, the period is not distant when it must cease to be a speciality. Its facts and tenets, its science and practice, must form the framework of the profession of the engineer. Every engineer must ultimately become an electrician; and electricity will be the most general, the most useful, and the most interesting form in which he applies the fundamental principles of energy to the wants, the comforts and the happiness of mankind. On the motion of Sir Frederick Bramwell, Bart. (PastPresident), seconded by Mr. Edward Woods (Past-President), it was Resolved-That the best thanks of the Institution be accorded to the President for his Address, and that he be asked to permit it to be printed in the Minutes of Proceedings. The President then presented the Telford, Watt, George Stephenson and James Forrest Medals, and announced the other awards made by the Council in respect of Session 1896–97. A reception was subsequently held in the Library. 8 November, 1898. WILLIAM HENRY PREECE, C.B., F.R.S., President, (Paper No. 3137.) "The Extraction of Nickel from its Ores by the By WILLIAM CHANDLER ROBERTS-AUSTEN, C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S., THE rules of the Institution enact that those elected into it shall submit a Paper within a year of election. In complying with this direction, the Author was satisfied that no better subject could be selected for consideration than the interesting process which marks an entirely new departure, in metallurgical practice, from the principles which have hitherto guided it. This process depends on the remarkable property possessed by nickel of forming a volatile compound with carbonic oxide, or, as it is called in modern chemical nomenclature, carbon-monoxide. When this gaseous compound is heated to 180° C. nickel is released in the metallic form. The Author was much impressed during a recent visit to Canada with the Imperial importance of the great nickeliferous district of Sudbury, Ontario. In view of the magnitude of this deposit, the annual production of metallic nickel in Canada seems inadequate, as it has hitherto not exceeded 2,750 tons. The description therefore of any new process which affords a hope of hastening the development of this remarkable district should prove to be interesting. The deposit itself presents many points of interest. According to Professor Coleman of Toronto, the nickel ores of Ontario resemble the gold ores of Rossland in British Columbia, as they consist of a mixture of pyrrhotite (magnetic pyrites) and copper pyrites. These sulphides form enormous masses near the margin of large areas of diorite, or weathered gabbro of Huronian age, the amount of nickel contained in the ore averaging between 2 per cent. and 10 per cent., the lower proportion being the more common. It is worthy of note that pyrrhotine from other parts of the country, found in association with Laurentian rocks, is almost barren of nickel. The importance of the nickel deposits of Ontario may be judged from the fact that, until the mines in the Sudbury region were worked, the world's supply of the metal was drawn chiefly from the mines of New Caledonia, an island in the Southern Pacific, supplemented by the Gap mine in Pennsylvania, and a few isolated mines in Norway and Hungary. The extent of the Sudbury deposits is greater than any of these, and New Caledonia, which belongs to France, is virtually the only rival of Ontario in the production of nickel. The ore at Sudbury is smelted into a regulus, or matte, which contains between 12 per cent. and 20 per cent. of nickel, and about the same amount of copper, although usually there is rather more copper than nickel. This matte may be enriched by suitable treatment, and is "Bessemerized" into a regulus which contains about 40 per cent. of nickel, and is specially free from iron, as the following analyses show : ANALYSES OF BESSEMER MATTE UNROASTED. It is unnecessary to give a history of the metallurgy of nickel, but it may be well to state that Chronstet isolated the metal in the year 1751, and that Bergman confirmed his discovery in 1774. The methods hitherto employed for extracting the metal from its ores are very complicated; they have involved concentrating the nickel either as a sulphide (matte or regulus), or as arsenide (speise) followed by either "dry" or wet" treatment. In the case of certain ores, wet methods only have been employed. The metallic nickel has always to be subjected to a process of refining, mainly, as in the case of cast iron, with a view to separate it from associated carbon. As regards the process which forms the subject of this Paper a few brief historical details may be offered. In 1889 Dr. Ludwig Mond, F.R.S., in collaboration with Dr. Carl Langer, was engaged in working out a method for eliminating the carbonmonoxide from gases containing hydrogen1 which they wanted for use in their gas battery.2 In attempting to effect this, they were guided by the observation they had previously made that finely divided nickel has the remarkable property of removing carbon from carbon-monoxide at a temperature of 350° C., converting it into carbon-dioxide, while the dissociation of carbonmonoxide by heat alone, according to Victor Meyer and Carl Langer, remains incomplete at the high temperature lof 1,690° C. In the course of these experiments, which they carried out in conjunction with Dr. Friedrich Quincke,3 finely divided nickel, formed by reducing nickel oxide at 350° C. by hydrogen, was treated with pure carbon-monoxide in a glass tube at varying temperatures. In order to keep the poisonous carbon-monoxide out of the atmosphere of the laboratory the gas escaping from the apparatus was ignited. They found to their surprise that while the tube containing the nickel was cooling, the flame of the escaping gas became luminous and increased in luminosity as the temperature sank below 100° C. Metallic spots were, moreover, deposited on a cold plate of porcelain held in this luminous flame, just as spots of arsenic are obtained in applying the Marsh test for that metal. It was also observed that on heating the tube through which the gas was escaping, a metallic mirror was obtained, while the luminosity of the flame disappeared. On examination these metallic deposits were found to be pure nickel. The next step was to endeavour to isolate this curious and interesting nickeliferous compound, by preparing nickel with great care at the lowest possible temperature, and treating it with carbon-monoxide at about 50° C. The amount of the volatile nickel compound in the gases passing through the apparatus was thus gradually increased. The gases issuing from the apparatus were treated with a solution of cuprous chloride to absorb the excess of carbon-monoxide, and in this way a residue of several cubic centimetres of a colourless gas was obtained, containing the volatile nickel compound. By passing this gas through a heated tube the nickel and carbon-monoxide were again separated, and the volume of the carbon-mon 1 Ludwig Mond and C. Langer. "Improvements in obtaining Hydrogen," British Patent No. 12,608, 1888. 2 * Ludwig Mond and C. Langer. "A new form of gas battery." Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xlvi. p. 296. Ludwig Mond, C. Langer, and F. Quincke. Journal of the Chemical Society, vol. lvii. p. 749. |