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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1964-11-26, Page 20kllJno#,Wc•PQRTQII. $g*rolerii. on.. NOV,. 2,6, 1944 THE STORY OF SULPHUR OUR NEW STORE • will be pen Friday Nights until 9 p.m. OPEN SATURDAY UNTIL 6 p.m. Lots of FREE Parking - Mill closed at noon on Saturdays Seaforth Farmers Co-op Phone 527-0770 Osst ..)e, I ft,' I „4, ire I je, I s I v`e, .Don't Wait Until They Are Picked Over ! COME IN NOW WHILE THERE IS A CHOICE SET OF TV TABLES 7.77 KNIFE SHARPENERS— Electric 14.95 - 15.95 PRESTO COOKER 19.95 GLASS PUNCH BOWL and 12 CUPS 7.50 4 -SLICE TOASTERS 24.95 2 -SLICE TOASTERS 14.95 SAW, LEVEL and RULER SET9.98 BENCH GRINDER 29.95 COOEY SINGE SHOT—.22 • 16.50 COOEY REPEATER—.22 27.50 COOEY SHOTGUN 27.50 PELLET GUN • 16.50 TOYS -- -TOYS -- TOYS • Sills Hardware Phone 527-1620 — Seaforth Man Urns (By Duncan McLeod in Imperial Oil Review) One day in 1862 a schooner With a caro of Canadian kero- sene arrived in Liverpiiol har- bor. The port authorities went below for a routine inspection. Moments later they tumbled back on deck, grasping, chok- ing and holding their noses. A wave of sulphurous odors from the kerosene barrels had caught them smartly -between the eyes. When they could breathe again they thundered, 'You can't store that in our warehouse. Get it Out!' So the schooner (presum- ably manned by a crew with no sense of smell) returned the cargo to its oil company owners in Canada. Actually, if the Canadian oil- men- had read up on history, they might have anticipated the incident. For centuries man has turned up his nose at sul- phur in one form or another. It's one of the most valuable elements on earth but some- how it's always in bad odor. Sulphur dioxide is so naus- eating that witch doctors be- lieved it would drive away evil spirits. A concentration of 1/10 of 1 per cent of hydrogen sula phide—the gas with the rotten eggs odor—will paralyze the• olfactory nerves, lungs and heart and can even kill. (How- ever, it is virtually impossible to achieve such a lethal con- centration outside A labora- tory.) Brimstone, as sulphur was once known, had other evil con- notations. The Bible says Hell consists of 'lakes burning. with brimstone'. Shakespeare and Milton, among others, describ- ed the nether world as 'the sul- phurous .pit' and 'the devil's brimstone bed'. Generations of preachers have frightened sin out of their congregations with 'hell -fire and brimstone' ser- mons. Until a generation or two ago sulphur also signified to .children the awful spring -time ritual of being dosed by solici- tous mothers with a' 'tonic' of sulphur and molasses (also call- ed brimstone and treacle). The molasses was supposed to take the curse off the 'medicinal' sulphur, but it never did. During the past hundred years sulphur has been a nuis- ance to the petroleum industry too. The amount of sulphur in crude oil is often a costly fac- tor in the desigh of a refinery. Expensive alloys must be used for processing equipment (to guard against corrosion) and treating systems are needed to remove smelly sulphur com- pounds. Natural gas too must have essentially all the sulphur compounds removed. In spite of all this, sulphur doesn't deserve the abuse that it gets. It doesn't smell bad, for instance, until it's mixed with oxygen or hydrogen. It is a necessary part (1/4 of 1 per cent) of the human body and it's an ' essential ingredient of such worthwhile items as eggs, mustard, garlice, cabbag e, horseradish, wool and hair. It has made itself indispens- able to industry. It makes rub- ber behave like rubber, instead of like chewing gum. It helps prepare this paper you're read- ing, the food you eat and . the clothes you wear. In its pure state sulphur is , „ Ducotent" vitaess . ,• Special Prices on TELEVISION SETS (New and Used) REFRIGERATORS - RANGES There is no more pleasing Christmas Gift than an Electrical Gift ! Here at DUBLIN ELECTRIC you have a wide choice of Popular Appliances. 1 DUBLIN ELECT Phone 70 R 2 %wow 2140 DUBLIN r— • U.0 His Nose atilt at bright yellow, odorless, taste- less, non-metallic element that solidifies into stone-like Jumps. It is highly combustible and bUrnS "With—a— sputtering bbie flame, emitting the distinctive odor of sulphur dioxide. Until about a century ago most English-speaking people called it brimstone, an anglic- ized version of the medieval term 'brennerstoue' which meant 'burning stone'. The sup- posed phenomenon of stone be- ing able to burn so mystified medieval people that they used this term in preference to the academic 'sulphur'. Phlogiston - Theory Was Wrong Medieval alchemists, also im- pressed with the combustible characteristic of sulphur, claim- ed it proved that fire itself was a material substance. Their hy- pothesis, the Phlogiston Theory, wasn't refuted until 1777 when Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, proved that combustion is nothing more than the uniting of other elements with oxygen. Lavoisier also later claimed sulphur was an element, a view that out- raged his contemporafies who believed it was a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Lavoisier didn't have time to prove his claim (he was guillotined dur- ing the French Revolution in 17.94) but in 1805 Joseph Gay- Lussac and Louis Thenard did. Man had been using sulphur long before this. Witch doctors, burning it to scare away evil spirits, discovered that its fumes 'killed insects and ver- min'and took the colors out of wool, fur and feathers. Thus man •early discovered the value of sulphur dioxide in fumigat- ing and bleaching. The belief that sulphur fumes destroyed all disease -breeding vermin - continued down over the centuries to grandmother's day when the burning of 'a sul- phur candle in homes 'followed eyery outbreak of such conta- gious diseases as scarlet fever and measles. Although we now know sulphur fumes cannot kill microbes of such diseases, sul- phur dioxide is still extensively used as a bleaching agent in the textile industry and as a cleans- ing agent in fermentation and in food industries. The Value of sulphur as a medicinal salve for skin diseas- es was also discovered long ago. An Egyptian papyrus of about 1550 B.C. prescribed a sulphur salve for granulated eyelids. Sulphur is still an ingredient in various ointments and soaps for such skin disease as scabies, ringworm, acne and psoriasis. The Byzantine Greeks are be- lieved to have been the first to capitalize on sulphur's combus- tible properties. They mixed sulphur lime, pitch and oil in- to a sticky ball, set it on a,re, and catapulted the flaming mass onto enemy ships. This air-' borne hotfoot won great sea victories and became • known and feared as 'Greek fire'. About a thousand, years lat- er, the Chinese also began to get a'bang out of sulphur. They mixed it with saltpetre (potas- sium nitrate) and ,,charcoal to create gunpowder. Until the Boer War in 1899-1902, gun- powder remained the sole am- munition of armies. Then it was replaced by cordite which had the distinct advantage of not confusing generals by hid- ing their armies under dense black clouds of gunpowder smoke. However, sulphur is still used to' a minor degree in gunpowder for blasting pow- ders and fuses of military am- munition, beoause it ignites quickly. By the 19th century sulphur, although not smelling any sweet,er, was becoming increas- ingly useful to man. In 1839 Charles Goodyear, a U.S. scien- tist, was trying to find a pro- cess that would prevent manu- factured rubber from becoming brittle as glass in winter and sticky as flypaper in summer. Being short of .cash at the time, he worked at home, creating strange and useless mixtures of chemicals and molten rubber. Then he accidentally left a• ket- tle of sulphur and rubber sim- mering on the kitchen stove ov- ernight. In the morning he dis- covered that the cooking had created the compound he want- ed. This had several salutary effects: it gave the world rub- ber tires, it made Goodyear a fortune, and it finally got him out from underfoot in 1Virs. Goodyear's kitchen. A First in Fertilizers The following year Baron Justus von Liebig, a 'member of the Prussian military caste who preferred to stay home and play farmer rather than play soldier, discovered that when natural rock phosphate was ground up and treated' with sulphuric ,acid it enabled the formerly insoluble phosphorus to be readily assimilated by •the roots of plants. His discovery provided the world's farmers for the first time with inex- haustible supplies of inexpen- sive artificial fertilizer; it en ables them today to grow more food for a burgeoning popula- tion. In 1850 William Turner,. an English fruit farmer, discover- ed that sulphur boiled in lime created a spray which killed a powdery mildew disease that was destroying the vineyards of Europe. This lime - sulphur spray is still used as an insec- tidde and fungicide to destroy parasites of plants and •aninfalii, C. D. Ekmann, a Swede, fol. lowed up in 1873 with another invention. He cooked wood chi9S, in a s_olution of sodium. sulphate and caustic soda, and produced pure cellulose for the production of paper. Vast sup- plies of paper and newsprint were produced cheaply for the first time, "starting us on the road to greater literacy and mass communication. In the 1880's the petroleum in- dustry began to use sulphuric acid to take the stink out of kerosene `distilled from crude oil. However, southern Ontario crude contained a large num- ber of sulphurous' compounds, some of which couldn't be re- moved by sulphuric acid. So Imperial 01.1 hired Ilerman Frasch, one of the world's first and most brilliant oil technolo- gists. He developed a method to remove the sulphur com- pounds by adding powdered ox- ides of copper, lead and iron to the kerosene. The sulphur com-,. pounds united with the oxides, the kerosene was distilled, then treated with sulphuric ;acid and an alkaline solution to make an essentially sulphur - free pro- duct. Today sulphuric acid is prob- ably the most important single substance in the chemical in- dustry, because it has an un: usually wide range of applica- tion and is one of the cheapest of all industrial chemicals to produce. Some chemical pro- cesses use sulphuric acid be- cause they need the sulphur it contains; others because it will take away water or even. atoms of hydrogen and oxygen which make up water; many simply because it is the cheapest acid. ; It's Cheap and Abundant Fortunately for us, sulphur is relatively abundant and in- expensive. It is widely distri- buted throughout the world and occurs in many different types of, deposits, some of which are of little commercial value. Us- ually this is because relatively small quantities of sulphur are associated with other elements, minerals,'crude oils and natural gaseswhich in themselves are not of sufficient value to refine so their sulphur contents can be recovered as. by-products. Its commonest types are suit phides of most metals and as sulphates of such elements as calcium and barium. However, vast sedimentary deposits of sulphur have been found close to the earth's surface in south- ern Sicily and in the cap rock formations. of salt domes un- der the coastal regions of Mexi- co, Texas and Louisiana. Highly concentrated deposits of sul- phur are also found deposited by volcanoes on their slopes, thainly, in the Andes, Japan and Indonesia. Until the turn of this century the world's supply of sulphur came from mines in Sicily, vol- canic deposits and as by-pro- ducts of smelting operations which processed sulphide ores to obtain such minerals as cop- per, lead and iron. okt in 1903 Herman, Frasch perfected a process that economically brought to the earth's surface the sulphur locked under the coastal' regions of Texas and Louisiana. Frasch's process consisted of BRUCEFIELD Messengers Meet The second annual family program of the Brucefield Mes- sengers was held on , Sunday with over 40 children! partici- pating. Ronnie Graham was -the master of ceremonies. The pre- school childrbn, under the lead- ership of Barbara Swan, did a finger play, "The' Church," and sang, "I'm Going to Grandma's House." A highlight was the Hender- son trio, Bobby, Donna and Dan- ny, of Seaforth, who sang, "How Much is That Doggy 'in the Window?" and4- "God's Little Candles." A Messenger graduation ser- vice took place with the assist- ance of Mrs. E. Allan and Mrs. R. Hancock. Janet Graham and Debra Brodie were presented With certificates. Mementos were presented to Beth and Gwen Hill and Sandra Graham in ap- preciation of assistance given to the Messengers during the year. Solos were rendered by Diane Itenderson, "Did You Stop To pray This Morning?" and "He Will Work Wonders. For You." The Hendersons were accom- panied by their mother. A report of activities during the past year was given by Jan- et Graham. Graduation tokens were presented to seven boys. Mr. Elgin Thompson assisted and referred to Bible verses and advised the boys never to lie, to continue attending Sun- day School, and to assist their parents. A filmstrip, "The Beloved Surgeon," was shown with the help of Mr. D. Aiken and Doug- las Swan. A workshop service on the theme, "God is Love, and Love Must Be Shared," was led by Debra Brodie, Joe,Lobb, Bri- an Wilson and Larry McGre- gor. The offering was received by Karen McGregor, Gwen Hill, Bobby Wilson and Greg Har- greaves. Courtesy remarks were given by Paul Swan. Stew- art Mustard and Lawrence El- licott acted'as ushers. The offer- ing Of $11.38 was appreciated. s.. drilling a hole down tiX the.si* phur-bearing formation withthe, same type of rotary rig! lased in. the oil industry, ,Into this hole' went the coticentrieillY —*- ranged pipes. Superheated wa, ter pumped down the largest pipe melted the sulphur. Com- pressed 4'air, forced down the smallest pipe, brought the mol- ten 999 per cent pure sulphur up through the middle pipe. • In recent years petroleum companies also have been, re- covering and marketing fairly large quantities of sulphur' as a by-product of refining. This year Imperial 011 will complete at its Sarnia refinery a $460,000 plant which will elminate a source of air pollution and pro- duce commercial quantities of sulphur from hydrogen 'sulph- ide. At present, this by-product of the refining operation is be- ing burned off. The discovery in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Co- lumbia since 1947 of vast de- posits of. 'sour' natural gas (estimated potential 200 to 300 trillion cubic feet), many of which have a high content of hydrogen sulphide, gives Can- ada a new, tremendous source of sulphur. There appears to be a ready market around the world. The U.S. demand alone is expected to reach over 12 million tons in 1975, a 110 per cent increase over the 1950 consumption. One of the major increases in the use of sulphur through- out the world is for sulphuric acid in the production of fer- tilizer. With half the people on earth undernourished, sul- phur can play a vital role' in helping solve one of the most important problems men face today—the growing of more food for the world's expanding population. All of which could make it one of the four or five most im- portant elements on earth. Pity everyone thinks it's such a stinker. R? ? Bring your RUBBER STAMPS •up to date. Call us now and place your order. Speedy service. Phone 527-0240 • -- Seaforth • :-- • • • ;•-4 ra..t 7,1 SmitI 's MON SPECIALS -- Thursday Friday Saturday Nov. 26 - 27 - 28 TIip Colored Margarine • 2 1.1b. Pkgs. 49 Domestic . Shortening 1-1b. Pkg 310 Libby's Deep Brown ' Beans 2 20 -oz. Tins Clover Leaf •— 7 -oz. Tins Tuna Fish—Fancy • • • • • • 420 .v10- ••• Pillsbury Cake Mixes 2 Lge. Pkgs. 750 (White, Chocolate or Pineapple) Maple Leaf Mincemeat Tin 490 WALLACE. TURKEY "PIES Reg. 3 for 69c 390 Special 3 for 590 v All Varieties of CHRISTMAS CANDIES and NUTS We Carry a Complete Assortment For Your Chris as Cake Needs Whole Citron, Cut Mixed Fruits, Peels, Large Seeded Raisins, Sulta and White Raisins, Currants, Red, Green and Natural Pineapple, Red and Green Cherries, Almond Icirig, etc. • ALL FRESH STOCK I An Outstanding Seleition- of Christmas Cakes and Christmas Puddings is available for your holiday feasting! Smith's Superior Food Market Phone 527-0990 SEAFORTH Free Delivery SEE YOU AT»,THE SANTA CLAUS PARADE SATURDAY