There are other potash-bearing wastes that might be utilized. The cement
mills which use feldspar in combination with limestone give off a potash
dust, very much to the annoyance of their neighbors. This can be
collected by running the furnace clouds into large settling chambers or
long flues, where the dust may be caught in bags, or washed out by water
sprays or thrown down by electricity. The blast furnaces for iron also
throw off potash-bearing fumes.
Our six-million-ton crop of sugar beets contains some 12,000 tons of
nitrogen, 4000 tons of phosphoric acid and 18,000 tons of potash, all of
which is lost except where the waste liquors from the sugar factory are
used in irrigating the beet land. The beet molasses, after extracting
all the sugar possible by means of lime, leaves a waste liquor from
which the potash can be recovered by evaporation and charring and
leaching the residue. The Germans get 5000 tons of potassium cyanide and
as much ammonium sulfate annually from the waste liquor of their beet
sugar factories and if it pays them to save this it ought to pay us
where potash is dearer.
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