Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Second part - X. Manufacturing Industries. By Å. G. Ekstrand, Ph. D., Chief Engineer, Control Office of the Department of Finance - 9. Chemical Industry - Explosives
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chemical industry.
859
supplies of charcoal and sulphur, hut potassium-nitrate has to be obtained
artificially by soaking it out of the soil under stables and cattle sheds
and mixing it for the purpose with potash. The production of
potassium-nitrate was also effected by means of special potassium-nitrate boxes,
as they were termed, in which a mixture of soil, ashes, and urine was
duly turned over in such a way as to yield a tolerably large quantity.
In previous times, since the age of Gustavus Vasa (1523/60), when the
manufacture . of gunpowder became a national concern, the State levied so to say a
saltpeter tax on all land; at first this took the form of a right to the disposal
of all saltpeter soil under cattlesheds etc., out of which State-appointed
saltpeter-makers were required to boil the saltpeter for the use of the government
gunpowder factories; later on, the landowners had to provide the saltpeter themselves
or pay an equivalent money fine. From 1815/93 the country was divided into
so many saltpeter-making districts for the management of the business connected
with the levying of the tax etc., each district being under a director; at first the
number of districts was 13, but it gradually dwindled, till at length, in 1883,
only the Vesterbotten district remained. The manufacture of saltpeter, in 1811/66,
was under the supreme superintendence of a committee appointed for the purpose,
subsequently of the artillery branch of the Military Department. In 1893 the
State relinquished all concern with the manufacture, and at present probably none
is made in the whole country, the small requirements of the commodity being
supplied by import from abroad, principally from Germany.
In the meantime, the manufacture of explosives has entered upon a
new phase; the year 1864 marks a new epoch in the technics of
explosives, for it was then that the famous Alfred Nobel established the
Vinterviken dynamite factory, near Stockholm, the oldest of its kind
in the world. The effective ingredient in dynamite is nitroglycerine,
and this substance, obtained by treating glycerine with strong nitric
acid, is far cheaper and far more efficacious than ordinary gunpowder.
By mixing nitroglycerine with infusorial earth, a solid explosive
substance is obtained, which is less dangerous to handle, and it is this
which is called dynamite. Nitroglycerine can also be combined with
other explosive agents, giving rise to a number of explosive substances
with differing qualities, suited for various purposes. Some of these
combinations are: sebastine and. ammoniac-gunpowder.
Another very violent explosive is guncotton or nitrocellulose,
obtained by treating cotton with strong nitric acid. Nitrocellulose can
also be combined with nitroglycerine; the former then swells out or
becomes gelatinized in the nitroglycerine. A gelatinized composition of
that nature is called blaBting gelatine or gum-dynamite; if the
gelatinizing process be carried out in a suitable manner, the composition,
subsequent to drying, can be compressed into a horny, elastic substance,
far less dangerous than guncotton to handle, but quite as effective in use.
Gelatinized and compressed guncotton is employed in the production
of smokeless, or more properly almost smokeless, varieties of gunpowder.
The fact of the matter is that the combustible ingredients of nitro-
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