Introduction and Background

CHLORIDE OF LIME ee IN “” SANITATION BY ALBERT H. HOOKER Technical Director Hooker Electrochemical Company NEW YORK JOHN WILEY & SONS Lonpon: CHAPMAN & HALL, Loaren 1913 « Corraicut, 1918, sy Ausert H. Hooker THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 586362 ABTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN fF) * “ATIONS, 11a R L 298 Mernorourax Towmn ‘New Youx Crrr CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE... 1... s eee eee eeee . see . . ee v CHLORIDE OF LIME 1 CHLORIDE OF LIME FOR WATER PURIFICATION. . 6 SEWAGE DISINFECTION ....... Ponce KORG RS EES STREET SPRINKLING AND FLUSHING. ........+0.00 see eens EPIDEMICS, SURGERY AND GENERAL SANITATION. CHLORIDE OF LIME ON THE FARM. THE WAR AGAINST THE INFECTIOUS HOUSE FLY. ABSTRACTS AND REFERENCEB..........0-00+5 SEWAGE POLLUTION. . THE TYPHOID SITUATION. ‘WATER-BORNE DISEASES....... ‘THE BACTERIOLOGY OF WATER: ITS PRESENT POSITION, BACTERIAL EFFICIENCY OF HYPOCHLORITE TREATMENT. EFFICIENCY OF CHLORIDE OF LIME REPORTED FROM AMERICAN WATER jf; WORKS........ “ 104 ‘UNSAFETY OF FILTERS. oa 107 FILTER EFFICIENCY INCREASED BY USING CHLORIDE OF LIME. vee 107 ODOR, TASTE, INFLUENCE OF TREATED WATER ON HEALTH. 110 ‘MODE OF APPLICATION OF CHLORIDE OF LIME IN WATERSTERILIZATION 113 ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS OF PROCESS............0005 seevee 121 EMERGENCY PLANTS... . 122 STERILIZATION IN DAIRIES 122 SWIMMING POOLS. 123 COST OF TREATMENT. - 126 SOME CITIES USING CHLORIDE OF LIME INNATE PURIFICATION. .... 129 HISTORICAL RESUMSC# CHLORIDE OF ‘LEMP IN ‘WATER STERILIZATION. 134 _- OTHER METHODS OF WATER STERILIZATION. «2. 00+ sees sere seeeee 185 —— FURTHER BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 3 Spzamicks: ON STERILIZATION OF WATER AND PURIFICATION 137 NATURE OF SEWAGE . 139 SEWAGE BACTERIA 141 INFECTION OF SEWAGE BY DELAY: SEEDING. . 145 ‘TREND OF PRESENT DAY DEVELOPMENT IN SEWAGE DISPOSAL. 146 SEWAGE DISPOSAL BY DILUTION 47 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FRESH WATER AND SHA WATER AS REGARDS SEWAGE DISPOSAL. eeeceecces . . 149 BHASONABLE LIMITS TO OXYGEN EXHAUSTION 151 SOME STATEMENTS ON OXYGEN EXHAUSTION IN SEWAGE DISPOSAL. 153 iii Vv Contents. ABSTRACTS AND REFERENCES—Concluded. Page PUTRESCIBILITY AND STABILITY TESTS 158 STERILIZATION OF SEWAGE 161 MODE OF STERILIZING SEWAGE AND CosT. SUSPENDED MATTERS IN SEWAGE AND SLUDGE ADOPTION, ACTUAL AND PROSPECTIVE, OF SEWAGE STERILIZATION BY FURTHER BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES ON STERILIZATION OF SEWAGE... LIFE HABITS OF THE HOUSE FLY GENERAL STATEMENT ON INFECTION BY FLIES. RANGE OF FLIGHT OF FLIES.... ae FLIES FEEDING ON EXCREMENTS......... BACTERIAL DYSENTERY—INFANT MORTALITY . FLIES AND OPHTHALMIA ‘i ECONOMIC LOSS CAUSED BY THE HOUSE FLY. FURTHER BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES ON THE HOUSE FLY. BACTERIA IN STREET DUST. DUST IN CONNECTION WITH INFANTILE PARALYSIS AND MENINGITIS. STREET FLUSHING AND CLEANING . DISINFECTION . STANDARDIZING OF CHEMICAL DISINFECTANTS HYPOCHLORITES IN PRESENCE OF ORGANIC MATTER—USES. + FURTHER EVIDENCE OF-GERMICIDAL STRENGTH. OF CHLORIDE OF LIMB 222 PREFACE N THE advice of Dr. L. H. Baekeland, President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and chem- ical counsel of the Hooker Electrochemical Com- pany, the research department of the latter company undertook to collect all data relating to the uses of chloride of lime in sanitation. An unexpectedly large amount of important information was thus obtained, and the fact was clearly revealed that this inex- pensive chemical was one of the most valuable and economical agents available for the protection, in many ways, of the public health. It, therefore, seemed almost a duty to place before sanitarians and those in charge of work connected with public health, the information brought together, all of which is not readily acces- sible. Hence this book was written. Instead of presenting a dry enumeration of bibliographical abstracts, it was thought preferable to offer the subject in a some- what more connected form in several chapters, each dealing with a different problem of sanitation. The reader who desires more information may find it in the chapter of abstracts where subjects can be traced further to the original sources of information, I desire to express my thanks for the valuable aid received from Mr. 0. C. Hagemann, who was employed for collecting the bibliographical references, and to Dr. Baekeland, whose con- tinuous advice and assistance inspired our enthusiasm to publish this work. Apert H. Hooxer, Niagara Falls, N. Y., August, 1912, CHLORIDE OF LIME. EW elements are more widely distributed than chlorine. F We find it in combination with the metal sodium as chloride of sodium, or common salt, in inexhaustible quantities in sea-water, or as large mineral deposits of rock salt. Its very presence in our blood seems to be a physiological neces- sity. Yet the discovery of this element is of relatively recent date. We owe the discovery of chlorine to the famous Swedish chem- ist, Scheele, born in 1842. It is a heavy gas, of green color, and of very corrosive properties. It attacks violently metals and organic bodies. It is soluble in water and gives a greenish solution of irritating smell, which soon decomposes, specially when exposed to light. The gas can be liquefied by compressing it in special machines. If care be taken to exclude all moisture, this liquefied chlorine can be kept and transported in strong steel cylinders and has become a commercial article, which is now manufactured in the United States as well as in other countries, like Germany. Berthollet, the French chemist, in 1785, as the result of care- ful investigations, declared chlorine to be an oxygenated muriatic acid (acide muriatique oxygen). But it was not until 1810 that Sir Humphry Davy definitely showed chlorine to be a chemical element, and not a compound. He gave it the name chlorine from the Greek yAopos =green. In the early days, after Berthollet observed that chlorine gas possessed the remarkable property of destroying the color of vegetable substances with which it came in contact, he happened to have with him as a visitor, a young Englishman, no less a personage than James Watt, to whom he showed the bleached articles. Watt was deeply impressed, and at once thought of his Scotch home, where his father-in-law was engaged in a large way in the time-honored staple industry of linen bleaching which for centuries had given character to wide stretches of rural Scotland. 1 2 Chloride of Lime in Sanitation. The Scotch bleachers never had been able to attain a perfect degree of whiteness. In fact it was customary to send the goods to Holland and Flanders, where a highly lucrative but conserva- tive industry flourished, based on a finishing process in which the use of buttermilk seemed indispensable. The costly white linen thus obtained (the term “Hollands” remains to this day) was shipped back to Leith, the trade center for this staple. Watt induced his father-in-law to make a trial with chlorine, which he did with about 1500 yards of linen. The immediate results astonished everybody, but were soon turned into disappointment, after the chlorine attacked the fiber, and the linen rotted until it was entirely spoiled. Jeers then came down upon the young enthusiast from every side of a circle dom- inated by the prejudices of trade habits. Watt undertook another journey to Paris, and Berthollet contrived a remedy: he neutralized the obnoxious properties of chlorine gas by absorbing it first into a solution of alkali. Chlorine bleaching had now become feasible, though the high cost of the chemicals still marred its commercial success. Soda, which can be bought today at less than a cent a pound, in a state of purity of about 99%, then only existed in a crude 20% form called Barilla, made from sea weeds, for which 13 cents per pound was charged. But the right man, Dr. Henry, took hold of the problem. He substituted milk of lime for the expensive alkali and after twelve years of clever and tenacious labor, succeeded in con- verting the powerful chlorine gas into a dry-portable, handy form, containing 35% efficient chlorine, by combining it with slaked lime, thus making so-called “chloride of lime.’’ Chloride of lime is known also as “Bleach,” “Bleaching Powder,” “Hypochlorite of Lime,” etc. In 1799 Charles Tennant of Glasgow, was granted a patent for it, and for 100 years this trade has been developed and held where it took its origin, in England. In 1910 Great Britain produced 110,000 tons. The industrial use of chloride of lime, dates from about the year 1800. An interesting comparison of the amount manufactured and the price per ton is given by Mactear as follows: Chloride of Lime. 3 1799-1800 52 tons @ $680.00 per ton. 1805 147 “ @ 545.00 “ “ 1820 333 “ @ 292.00 “ “ 1825 910 “ @ 131.00 “ “ 1870 925 “ @ 41.50 “ “ The production of chlorine was of necessity intimately linked to the soda industry, or Leblanc process, because the initial raw material, common salt, or sodium chloride, is the same for both, or to put it more correctly from the muriatic acid produced obtained in the Leblanc-soda process. As early as 1825, chloride of lime was made from the recovered muriatic acid of the alkali plants. The greatest development of the production of chloride of lime dates from the introduction of the British Alkali Act about 1865, when the soda manufacturers were compelled to cease discharging large volumes of hydro- chloric (muriatic) acid vapors into the air, or condensed acid into the streams. The available outlet for this bothersome by- product was the manufacture of chloride of lime; hence the de- velopment of a market for its use. From this act to prevent a nuisance has grown up a great industry which now gives us not only an unusually efficient material for bleaching paper and textiles, but also the most economical and efficient disinfectant and deodorizing agent known. England’s enormous alkali trade reached its zenith about 1880, when she exported of alkalis 349,000 tons, of chloride of lime 71,600 tons. At that time (1880) the United States produced: Alkalis, 18,200 tons. Chloride of lime, none! United States imports in 1880 were: Alkalis, 166,400 tons. Chloride of lime, 34,000 tons. Be it understood that, inasmuch as the market for chloride of lime was much more limited than the demand for alkalis, a large portion of the chlorine material (hydrochloric or muriatic acid) obtained in the decomposition of salt for the Leblanc process, had to be wasted. Meanwhile, a new method for making soda from salt (sodium 4 Chloride of Lime in Sanitation. chloride) and ammonia, the “Ammonia Soda process,” or Sol- vay process, had sprung up, and developed with gigantic strides; but this process gives no chlorine or chloride of lime as by- product. The pace kept by the two rivals may be followed from the follow- ing world’s production figures of soda (caustic and carbonate): 1860 1865 1870 18765 Old Leblanc process, tons = 165,000 413,000 463,000 495,000 Ammonia (Solvay) process BE serneazetace 330 =. 2,860 33,000 1880 1886 1890 1895 Leblanc process “ 546,000 436,000 391,000 447,000 Ammonia (Solvay) process 137,000 368,000 634,000 987,000 The Leblanc industry, threatened with ruin, however, held its own on account of the ever growing demand for chloride of lime, of which it remained the sole purveyor. British exports during 1890 rose to 89,000 tons and within the following two years, the so-called British Alkali Trust ad- vanced the price for chloride of lime by 40%. But a new rival was soon to appear, and from the year 1890 dates the installation of the first electrolytic works, for the electric production of alkali and chlorine with 400 electric horsepower, by what is usually known as the “Griesheim-Electron” concern in Frank- fort, Germany. The plant was doubled in 1892, and redoubled to 1600 horsepower in 1894. To the layman’s conception, we could not more forcibly pre- sent the singular efficiency and advantages of electrolytic methods, than by stating that by means of an electric current, sodium chloride, or common salt, is split into its constitutents, sodium and chlorine. The sodium reacts immediately on the water which is present and produces caustic soda. The chlorine is used for various purposes, but mainly for the manufacture of chloride of lime. This is done by bringing the chlorine gas in contact with slaked lime (hydroxide of calcium). This operation is carried on by conducting the chlorine in large chambers in which the slaked lime is spread in thin layers so as to facilitate Chloride of Lime. 5 absorption. The resulting bleaching powder, or chloride of lime, is then packed in barrels, as is done in Europe, or better in steel drums containing about 800 Ibs. each, as is done in the United States.. The electrolytic chloride of lime manufactured in the United States now contains generally 36%-39% of avail- able chlorine, while the European product usually contains only 35% or less. In the Leblanc and the Solvay processes for the manufacture of carbonate of sodium, or soda ash, the results are brought about in a much more indirect way than in the electrolytic processes; those older processes use several complicated steps in which a number of other chemicals are used, and made to act upon the common salt, and the intermediary products into which the sodium chloride is being successively converted. It is only through the monumental efficiency evolved in the recovery and re-use of these auxiliary chemical agents, that an ammonia-soda industry, producing annually 2,400,000 tons of soda-ash (sodium carbonate) can exist. Following up the success won by Griesheim Electron, came into existence a large number of electrolytic works, first in Germany: at Bitterfeld in 1894, 3,000 horsepower, at Rhein- felden in 1896, 3,500 horsepower, and further on extending to other countries, more specially in the United States where at this moment more than 30,000 electric horsepower are used daily in its production. There is an intense competition in the manu- facture of this article and many electrolytic manufacturing establishments started here and abroad with large outlay of money have resulted in dire failure; only some of the better equipped and better conducted plants have survived. At present (1912), the world’s production of chloride of lime approximates 400,000 metric tons (1,000 kilos or 2,200 Ibs.) with statistics for 1910 showing: Great Britain metric tons 110,000 Germany & “90,000 United States America “ “ 80,000 France and Belgium bai «40,000 Austria, Italy, Spain «30,000 Russia «22,000 6 Chloride of Lime in Sanitation. The United States started making chloride of lime in 1895; the singular progress made since in production, as the impor- tance to which this article has risen as a technical factor, may be judged from the following figures: United States Imports and Production of Chloride of Lime: Metric Tons. 1860 1856 1860 1866 1870 1876 Imports Production 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 Imports 34,000 43,300 45,100 45,600 61,900 Production ...... 0 ...... 0 ..ese 1906 1910 Imports 43,600 42,600 Production 17,800 81,000 Electrochemistry seems to have decreed the doom of the venerable Leblanc process and in the meantime, the price of chloride of lime has been halved. England’s annual exports have fallen to 50,800 tons, and the United States, though still importing heavily, supplies about two thirds of its own consump- tion. This home supply is furnished by several competing elec- trolytic plants. The name “chloride of lime” given to the product by the earlier chemists who dealt with this product, suggested at once thenotion, then predominant in the minds of the first investigators, that chlor- ine could chemically combine with lime in a simple manner. A rational theory on its composition and constitution was first propounded in 1835, by Balard, who found it to be composed of .-Ca(OCl): spade8 10,000 Calcium hypochlorite. Calcium chloride. . -CaCh and Calcium hydroxide. . Ca(OH). Subsequent investigations by Olding and other chemists have shown that calcium chloride, as such, does not exist in bleaching powder, but is formed on dissolving the latter in water. Accordingly, CaOCk, calcium oxychloride, is generally ac- cepted to be the essential constituent of dry chloride of lime, Chloride of Lime. 7 and to undergo in contact with water, the above mentioned change: 2CaOCk = Ca(OCl): +CaCk Calcium _ Calcium , Calcium oxychloride hypochlorite chloride Chloride of lime is soluble in about twenty times its weight of water, leaving a small insoluble residue, mostly calcium hydrate. In an aqueous solution, calcium hypochlorite forms the only valu- able constituent, the calcium chloride being inert and valueless. It should be well understood that chloride of lime, in its industrial application of bleaching, deodorizing, or disinfecting, does not act by tts chlorine, but by its oxygen. Its action is not “chlorination,” but “oxidation.” This