The chimney of the Rocourt distillery is, therefore, lighter by half, and cost about a third more, than one of brick; but, at the present price of metal, the difference would be slight.—­Annales Industrielles.

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THE PRODUCTION OF OXYGEN BY BRIN’S PROCESS.

Considerable interest has been aroused lately in scientific and industrial circles by a report that separation of the oxygen and nitrogen of the air was being effected on a large scale in London by a process which promises to render the gases available for general application in the arts.  The cheap manufacture of the compounds of nitrogen from the gas itself is still a dream of chemical enthusiasts; and though the pure gas is now available, the methods of making its compounds have yet to be devised.  But the industrial processes which already depend directly or indirectly on the chemical union of bodies with atmospheric oxygen are innumerable.

In all these processes the action of the gas is impeded by the bulky presence of its fellow constituent of air, nitrogen.  We may say, for instance, in homely phrase, that whenever a fire burns there are four volumes of nitrogen tending to extinguish it for every volume of oxygen supporting its combustion, and to the same degree the nitrogen interferes with all other processes of atmospheric oxidation, of which most metallurgical operations may be given as instances.  If, then, it has become possible to remove this diluent gas simply and cheaply in order to give the oxygen free play in its various applications, we are doubtless on the eve of a revolution among some of the most extensive and familiar of the world’s industries.

A series of chemical reactions has long been known by means of which oxygen could be separated out of air in the laboratory, and at various times processes based on these reactions have been patented for the production of oxygen on a large scale.  Until recently, however, none of these methods gave sufficiently satisfactory results.  The simplest and perhaps the best of them was based on the fact first noticed by Boussingault, that when baryta (BaO) is heated to low redness in a current of air, it takes up oxygen and becomes barium dioxide (BaO_{2}), and that this dioxide at a higher temperature is reconverted into free oxygen and baryta, the latter being ready for use again.  For many years it was assumed, however, by chemists that this ideally simple reaction was inapplicable on a commercial scale, owing to the gradual loss of power to absorb oxygen which was always found to take place in the baryta after a certain number of operations.  About eight years ago Messrs. A. & L. Brin, who had studied chemistry under Boussingault, undertook experiments with the view of determining why the baryta lost its power of absorbing oxygen.