Specification of William Robert Lake : deodorizing and utilizing sewage.

  • Lake, William Robert.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of William Robert Lake : deodorizing and utilizing sewage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 A.B. 1874.—N° 1415. Provisional Specification. Lake's Improved Apparatus for Deodorizing and Utilizing Sewage. the valuable portion of them, leaving the remainder valueless and deodorized to escape. The apparatus in which I conduct these operations consists of an agitator working in a large reservoir, one or more boilers or retorts, and a series of Woolfs bottles to each retort. The reservoir is by 5 preference sunk in the ground, and built of brick cemented on the inside. A pipe connects it with the retorts, which are by preference made of iron, and heated in any convenient way, whilst a bent pipe springs from the top of each retort and is connected with the first of a series of Woolfs bottles. 10 The material to be treated is supplied to the said reservoir through a grating or other suitable strainer for preventing the entrance of foreign ingredients. When in this reservoir the agitator is set in motion to bring the whole into a liquid of uniform consistency. When this is done a cock is turned in the connecting pipe leading to the retorts 15 so as to allow of a sufficient quantity being supplied to them. Here the liquid is agitated and boiled, and the resultant vapors are conducted through the bent pipe or neck of each retort into the first of a series of Woolf’s bottles, in each of which is a certain quantity of sulphate of iron. As the vapors pass through these bottles the ammonia and 20 other gases are retained by the sulphate of iron, leaving the residue an innocuous and deodorized vapor to escape into the atmosphere. I prefer to make the retorts of sufficient capacity to hold about seven tons of liquid each, and I consider four tons a sufficient charge. The Woolf’s bottles I prefer to make large enough to hold four 25 hundred gallons each, and I charge each with thirty-two pounds of sulphate of iron. Four, six, or eight may be used for each retort, the thinner the liquid the greater the number required, but four will be the standard. I continue to agitate and boil the contents of the retorts until the same are reduced to a state barely moist and with scarcely 30 any vapor arising therefrom. I then allow the said contents to cool and take the same out of the retorts ; this is a fine manure. I next take the contents of the Woolf’s bottles and subject the same to mechanical filtration, say through a blanket, and from this I obtain sulphate of ammonia by distillation or evaporation. 35 The precipitate remaining in the filtering material consists of protoxide and sulphide of iron which only requires to be dried, so that by this