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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    Clark's Improved Process of Treating Sewage for Manure. This Invention consists in utilizing certain residues as agents in the preparation of manures, that is to say, I use dry vegetable and earthy matters for the absorption of liquid or viscous matters, and obtain by the combination of the whole after filtering, drying, pounding, and mixing a plastic mass, which is moulded into cakes, dried in the open 5 air or artificially, and then pulverized for use as manure. This Invention consists, first, in causing the several elements con¬ stituting the refuse of towns to react on one another, and it relates more especially to the employment of drying matters which themselves form manures, in order to retain (and to convert by new combinations into 10 solid inodorous products) the utilizable principles of urine, sewage water, and other fertilizing liquids. Secondly. In a method of treating the said alvine sewage and other liquid matters to be used in the manufacture of artificial manure (and which are now treated by various disinfecting, decanting, and preci- 15 pitating processes) by the active agency of electricity, that is to say, by passing a current of electric fluid through the liquids to be purified, which facilitates the chemical reaction, precipitation, and settling of the matters held in suspension, as also the clarification and purification of the polluted liquid, 20 Thirdly. It relates to a method of consuming in certain cases these deleterious gases, which are incapable of being combined or sufficiently purified by the disinfecting processes employed by the aid of petroleum in ignition floated on the surface of the liquid. The means employed in this manufacture vary according as they apply to fermentable or non- 25 fermentable or solid matters. In the first case the preliminary employment of disinfectants previous to further treatment is indispensable, and in the latter case suitable precipitants and absorbents are used. It will be found more economical and wholesome and of greater 30 advantage in an agricultural point of view to collect the fertilizing matters in as fresh a condition as possible and in small quantities before their decomposition either in the open air or in water im¬ poverishes their quality, besides increasing the cost of treatment. The refuse of slaughter houses, fish markets, and dwellings are col- 35 lected in metal cases and sprinkled with slacked lime or phenicated sawdust if necessary. Human evacuations are also collected in a fresh