Specification of Alexander Melville Clark : treating sewage for manufacturing manure.

  • Clark, Alexander Melville.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of Alexander Melville Clark : treating sewage for manufacturing manure. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Specification. A.D. 1871.—N° 2879. 3 Clark's Improved Frocess of Treating Sewage for Manure. ciples. of manufactured manure, too often at the risk of annihilating or destroying the productive power of other useful elements. Such methods of manufacture can only produce manures of inferior quality, the commercial price of which, however, often exceeds their 5 agricultural value. Even stable manure, which lias a universally recognized value, only restores to the soil hut a small proportion of the fertilizing elements which have been extracted from it, and the same may be said of human excreta when used alone as manure. 10 Looking at the question in an agricultural light, towns are so many human stables, producing manure both richer and in more abundant quantity than that of farms, and it is this wealth which it is proposed by the present Invention to collect,,, concentrate, and treat both chemically and by mechanical means in order to secure all its utilizahle properties 15 in the form of solid products which are rendered inodorous and capable of being preserved until required for use without depreciating the quality,, at same time providing a composition of sufficient richness to repay the cost of transport.. The vegetable kingdom consists of infinitely varied combinations of 20 five or six elements. All plants, flowers, and fruits are formed of carbon,, hydrogen, and oxygen, with a little potash, sulphur, lime, or silica, and especially azote, which latter is contained to such a large amount in human excreta, and more particularly in urine, hut in so fermentable a form that on contact with the air the azote becomes 25 rapidly transformed into carbonate of ammonia, having a very disagree¬ able odour. All the above elements exist in the refuse of towns and in con¬ ditions especially favorable for obtaining combinations suitable for treatment.. 30 Application op the above Principles. The essential object is to collect all refuse matters as completely and thoroughly as possible, and to utilize them without delay in order to prevent or suspend their fermentation by purifying, decanting, and precipitating the same. 35 Hitherto the various materials employed as manures, such as fecal matters, sewage, blood, and other refuse have been always treated separately and distinctly in various ways and never in combination.