Chemical Magic

Another strategic metal which has been in great shortage is cobalt, vital for hardening jet engines to resist intense heat. Last week the ingenuity of U.S. industry promised to boost the supply of cobalt 40% by 1953. Source of the promise: a new chemical refining process developed by American Cyanamid Co., fourth biggest U.S. chemical company.

While the U.S. has deposits of cobalt ore, much of it is low-grade and expensive to recover. As a result, 90% of the cobalt consumed by the U.S. (more than 8,200,000 Ibs. a year) comes from Africa, which has abundant supplies. Cyanamid's process, developed by its Chemical Construction Corp. subsidiary, will enable the U.S. to utilize its own low-grade ores more cheaply, and produce pure cobalt from them at a much faster rate. For example, Howe Sound Co., for which "Chemico" is building a new $2,500,000 Utah plant to utilize the process, will be able to turn out 4,000,000 Ibs. a year of pure cobalt, or about 50% of U.S. consumption.

Chemico's Kansas-born chief engineer, Edward S. Roberts, 48, has been working on the process for 18 years; the company spent some $3,000,000 on research perfecting it. It starts by immersing ground crude ore in chemicals and water to float out some foreign matter. The Chemico method, using ammonia or acid, dissolves this concentrate in an "autoclave," similar to a huge pressure cooker. The resulting ore-bearing liquid is piped through a filter into another pressure vessel, where terrific heat and force precipitate the pure metal as a fine powder.

Not only does Chemico's process promise to boost the output of cobalt, but Engineer Roberts says it works equally well with other low-grade ores such as nickel, copper and manganese (but not as yet with iron ores). Moreover, by reducing the amount formerly lost in slag, he says it can increase the pure metal recovered from scrap as much as 15% for copper, 70% for zinc. He predicted it could eventually cut the production costs of cobalt up to 80%, copper and nickel as much as 50%.

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