Great Possibilities Offered By Iron For Increasing Human Performance

The Enormous Waste In Iron Manufacture

Iron is by far the most important factor in modern progress.

• It contributes more than any other industrial product to the force accelerating human movement.

• Its name is synonymous with usefulness.

But it does not add to the force urging man onward nearly as much as it might.

First of all, its current manufacture incurs an appalling waste of energy. Moreover, only a part of all the iron produced is applied for useful purposes.

• A good part of it goes to create frictional resistances
• Another large part is used in negative uses, such as for war, by negative forces that greatly retards human movement.

Thus, the negative force of war is almost wholly represented in iron.

• It is impossible to accurately estimate the magnitude of this force of war.
• But it is certainly very considerable.

Let us suppose that:

• all the possible present positive impelling force due to all useful applications of iron be represented by ten

the negative force of war, with due consideration of all its retarding influences and results, at, say, 6.

On the basis of this estimate, the effective impelling force of iron in the positive direction would be measured by the difference of these two numbers, which is 4.

But if, through the establishment of universal peace, the manufacture of war machinery should cease

and all struggle for supremacy between nations should be turned into healthful, ever active and productive commercial competition, then the positive impelling force due to iron would be measured by the sum of those two, numbers, which is 16.

This force would have 4 times its present value.

This example is, of course, merely intended to give an idea of the immense increase in the useful performance of mankind which would result from a radical reform of the iron industries supplying the implements of warfare.

A similar inestimable advantage in the saving of energy available to man would be secured by obviating the great waste of coal which is inseparably connected with the present methods of manufacturing iron.

In some countries, such as Great Britain, the hurtful effects of this squandering of fuel are beginning to be felt.

• The price of coal is constantly rising.
• The poor are made to suffer more and more.

We are still far from the dreaded “exhaustion of the coal-fields”. But philanthropy commands us to invent novel methods of manufacturing iron, which will not involve such barbarous waste of coal.

It is our duty to coming generations to leave this store of energy intact for them, or at least not to touch it until we shall have perfected processes for burning coal more efficiently.

The future generations will need fuel more than we do.

We should be able to manufacture the iron we require by using the sun’s energy, without wasting any coal at all.

As an effort to this end the idea of smelting iron ores by electric currents obtained from the energy of falling water has naturally suggested itself to many.

I have spent much time to evolve such a practical process to manufacture iron at small cost.

After a prolonged investigation, I found that it was unprofitable to use the currents generated directly for smelting the ore.

I devised a method which is far more economical.

Economical Production Of Iron By A New Process

The industrial project I worked on 6 years ago proposed to use electric currents derived from the energy of a waterfall to decompose water as a preliminary step for smelting the ore.

To lessen the cost of the plant, I proposed to generate the currents in exceptionally cheap and simple dynamos, which I designed for this sole purpose.

The hydrogen liberated in the electrolytic decomposition was to be burned or recombined with oxygen from the atmosphere.

Thus very nearly the total electrical energy used up in the decomposition of the water would be recovered in the form of heat resulting from the recombination of the hydrogen.

This heat was to be applied to the smelting of ore.

The oxygen gained as a by-product of the decomposition of the water I intended to use for certain other industrial purposes, which would probably yield good financial returns, inasmuch as this is the cheapest way of obtaining this gas in large quantities.

It could be employed to burn all kinds of refuse, cheap hydrocarbon, or coal of the most inferior quality which could not be burned in air or be otherwise utilized to advantage, and thus again a considerable amount of heat would be made available for the smelting of the ore.

To decrease the cost, the hot metal and the products of combustion coming out of the furnace would be arranged so that they would give up their heat upon the cold ore going into the furnace. In this way, comparatively little of the heat energy would be lost in the smelting.

I calculated that probably 40,000 pounds of iron could be produced per horse-power per annum by this method.

Liberal allowances were made for those losses which are unavoidable, the above quantity being about half of that theoretically obtainable.

Relying on this estimate and on practical data with reference to a certain kind of sand ore existing in abundance in the region of the Great Lakes, including cost of transportation and labor, I found that in some localities iron could be manufactured in this manner cheaper than by any of the adopted methods.

This result would be obtained all the more surely if the oxygen obtained from the water, instead of being used for smelting of ore, as assumed, should be more profitably employed.

Any new demand for this gas would secure a higher revenue from the plant, thus cheapening the iron. This project was advanced merely in the interest of industry. Some day, I hope, a beautiful industrial butterfly will come out of the dusty and shriveled chrysalis.

The production of iron from sand ores by a process of magnetic separation is highly commendable in principle, since it involves no waste of coal. But the usefulness of this method is largely reduced by the necessity of melting the iron afterward.

The crushing of iron ore is rational only if done by water-power, or by energy otherwise obtained without consumption of fuel.

An electrolytic cold process would make it possible to extract iron cheaply and also to mold it into the required forms without any fuel consumption. I think it would be a very great advance in iron manufacture.

In common with some other metals, iron has so far resisted electrolytic treatment, but there can be no doubt that such a cold process will ultimately replace in metallurgy the present crude method of casting, and thus obviating the enormous waste of fuel necessitated by the repeated heating of metal in the foundries.

Up to a few decades ago the usefulness of iron was based almost wholly on its remarkable mechanical properties, but since the advent of the commercial dynamo and electric motor its value to mankind has been greatly increased by its unique magnetic qualities.

As regards the latter, iron has been greatly improved of late. The signal progress began about thirteen years ago, when I discovered that in using soft Bessemer steel instead of wrought iron, as then customary, in an alternating motor, the performance of the machine was doubled.

I brought this fact to the attention of Mr. Albert Schmid, to whose untiring efforts and ability is largely due the supremacy of American electrical machinery, and who was then superintendent of an industrial corporation engaged in this field.

Following my suggestion, he constructed transformers of steel, and they showed the same marked improvement.

The investigation was then systematically continued under Mr. Schmid’s guidance, the impurities being gradually eliminated from the “steel” (which was only such in name, for in reality it was pure soft iron), and soon a product resulted which admitted of little further improvement.