Interior of N e w Seaboard Experimental Leaborafory of the Koppers Company a t Kearny, N. J. Pnrt of space used for seemi-cornrneid~aland plant scak drvrloprnent work
product coke oveii. Tliis development was tile result of ihe interplay of riiany diverse factors, including the daring ai capital, the prosecution of original research, the application of matured enginerring and clicmical knowledge, a tliorouglx understanding of fuels and their potential markcts, and the exercise of k e a merchandising ability. The contribution made by the Koppcrs Company to thc progress of this period is rmectcd, in part, by the statement that, of the 48 million odd tons of by-product coke produced in the United States in 1928, Koppers and Becker ovens accountcd for approximately 79 pcr cent. and, furthrr, of all cokc-oven in-
At Eome among the Atoms. BY JAMES KENDALL. A first volume of candid chemistry, dedicated to Sir James Walker and to the memory of Alexander Smith. 318 pages. The Century Co., New York, 1929. Price, W O O . In the iritroductiori the author says t h a t "this book has not been written for the scientific expert," so undoubtedly the reviewer has been happily chosen. And yet even as an orthodox teaclier of chemistry he is able t o applaud this effort to help the average citizen, who has an amateur's interest in chemistry, t o "orient himself and to distinguish fact from fancy" in the s b r y of the atom. Fundamental chemical theory is developed systematically and logically. Much of the presentation of elementary chemical theory is very similar to Alexander Smith's popular handling of the same material. In fact, the reviewer, who wasastudent of Smith, could almost hear the voice of that great teacher, pnrticularly as he was reading Chipter I l l . But the author has gone much farther than anyone else, the reviewer believes, in "unconventional (often almost flippant) methods of prescntation".-nactly how far only a reading of the book can tell. Thc book is very entertaining, the treatment being vigorous as well as frrsh. "Homely analogies and alleged wise-cracks furnish temporary distractions from the abrupt precipices of strict fundamental theory which cannot be avoided." These analogies and wise-cracks were usually so clever t h a t the reviewer was completely charmed by them. Occasionally, however, one wonders
is too bad, for the book otherwise is an encellent'pobulai treatment of chemical theory. It is true that when the book reaches the Bohr atom it is not very satisfying, and when it gets to
Monorail for Elecmc Crane. Also Secnon of Thlrd Floor of the New Seaboard Eiperlmenfsl Laboratory of the Koppers Company rat Kearny, N. J.
stallations made in the vast five years, 90 per cent have been of the Becker type. The company's appreciation of the best there is in engineering is strikingly exhibited in the great by-product coke plants which the traveler now can see as an impressive feature of hi5 ride as lie approaches New York. Philadelphia, Xew IIauen, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, and many other cities. These plants arc worthy examples of the highest expression of the a r t of the engineer. In their conception, design, and construction, technical and scientific skill have combined with imagination to produce units largely instrumental iii ushering in a new era of fuel technology.
Schradinger it is even less so. But could aiiy similar book do bctter? The author thinks that the book may, among other uses, serve a few unorthodox teachers as a textbook, and that others
of -his non-chemisi frknds. And he expects t h a t t h y will be not merely entertained but will also find in it "the sort of information regarding chemistry t h a t the serious minded searcher craves."--B. B. FREUD
Gas Analysis. BY L. M. DENNISAND hl. I,. NICHOLS. Kevised edition. 499 pages. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1929. Price, $4.00. This book is a valuable contribution to the literature of gas analysis, as until recently up-to-date information an this subject has been rather meager. It has probably been written mort as a textbook than for industrial use. The chapters on Combustion of Gases and Heating Valuc of Gas are especially good. Too much space has, however, bcen devoted to the Hcmpel apparatus, which is practically obsolete and requires a very skilled operator. More space should h a w been given to the type of apparatus employed by the United States Bureau of Mines. Also the method of Colman and Smith for the determination of naphthalene in gas has been im-
There are numerous references t o other heratlire and the book is vcry well indexed.-J. M. GONDER
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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Volumetric Analysis. Volume 11-Practical Volumetric Analysis. B Y I. M. KOLTHOFF AND N. HOWELL FURMAN. 552 pages. 18 illustrations and diagrams. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York; Chapman & Hall, Ltd., London, 1929. Price, $5.00. This work was very much needed as the older books on volumetric analysis had become inadequate. The scope of the present book is full and complete, scientific yet explicitly practical. In making up primary standards detailed directions are given for the purification of the substances selected to eliminate impurities. Differentiation is made between active and inactive impurities in a very helpful way. There is an adequate index. Chapters I and I1 are devoted to general considerations and should be read attentively as the accuracy of any of the detailed methods is dependent upon the care taken in the calibration and use of the volumetric flasks and burets. Chapters I11 to VII, inclusive, are on acidimetry and alkalimetry. The newer indicators are included and their pH ranges given, as well as color changes, suitable strengths for use, and amount required per 10 cc. of solution. The use of mixed indicators is explained and a large number of paired indicators are given with p T and color changes. The physico-chemical considerations in connection with the “titration of weak acids with weak bases” and polybasic acids and polyacid bases are studied as well as the analytical methods of procedure. Displacement reactions, or the driving out of a weak or slightly soluble acid by a stronger one, or the elimination of a weak base with a strong one, are given theoretical and practical treatment. Chapters VI11 and IX are devoted to the treatment of silver and other precipitation methods in volumetric analysis. Chapters X to XVIII, inclusive, describe oxidation and reduction methods in connection with the use of permanganate, iodine, dichromate, iodate, bromate, ceric sulfate, and titanous salts. A great deal of light is thrown on the older methods and the procedures are made more dependable as to results. A host of new methods are introduced. The authors stress the use of rational SADTLER equivalent weights.&AMUEL
s.
Report of the Fuel Research Board for the Year Ended 31st March, 1929, with Report of the Director of Fuel Research, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. 125 pages. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1929. Price, 2 s. This report, which not only covers the current year but also summarizes much of the work carried out since 1924, deals with most of the research problems that in one form or another face the users and producers of coal. It commences with an account of progress of the chemical and physical survey of the nation’s coal resources and the many ramified researches connected with evaluating the properties of coal in relation to its preparation and utilization, such as methods of sampling and analysis, microscopic and x-ray examination, assay for carbonization, coking quality, fusion point of ash, etc. Summary results are given of official tests made by the Government on seven commercial low-temperature carbonization plants. As to the commercial status of low-temperature carbonization, Doctor Lander states: I t is still too early to say whether low-temperature carbonization will eventually prove an economical process on a really large scale, or to say which of the various processes are most likely to prove successful. Some of the processes are, a t the present time, doubtless working a t a profit, but it does not necessarily follow that they could do so if the scale of working were greatly increased, or if the same process were applied t o other coals, under different conditions.
Other important investigations are the identification and isolation of sulfur compounds in water gas and their removal by active charcoal, silica gel, or by the use of catalysts or chemical reagents; composition of low-temperature tars and light oils; physical and chemical properties of coke; effect of oxidation on the coking properties of coal; briquetting; coal washing; hydrogenation of coal and production of hydrogen. It has been found that any carbonaceous materials, ranging from cellulose to anthracite, can, by controlled treatment with hydrogen under pressure, be converted into material which on carbonization yields a strong, coherent coke. At the end of the report is a list of the official publications of the board since its beginning in 1917, and also a long list of papers published in the technical press during the past year. I n view of these references and the valuable summaries in the report, no fuel technologist interested in coal research should fail to get a copy.-A. C. FIELDNER
VOl. 22, No. 1
Outlines of Biochemistry. The Organic Chemistry and the Physico-Chemical Reactions of Biologically Important Compounds and Systems. BY Ross AIKENGORTNER.793 pages. 133 figures in the text. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1929. Price, $6.00. This is not an easy volume to review because it contains so much that is good and so much that is bad. It is strongest in its first half, because it adds a colloid-chemical point of view to the substance composing the orthodox textbooks of “biochemistry” and because this is the half which is most essentially Gortner. If it were all Gortner it would be better still. Since the work of Hardy, Upson, and Wolfgang Ostwald on gluten none has worked more assiduously in this field than Gortner, for it is he who has brought us the greatest details of methods, fractionations, chemistry, individual colloid-chemical properties, and biological aspects of this important plant derivative These chapters give in collected fashion the results of Gortner’s extraordinary labors and, if the text is read carefully, an index to the fertility and rapidity of his mental processes. I say “read carefully” because didactic presentation, experimental finding, mathematical deduction, and folklore are likely to meet in any paragraph, and the reader will have to do his own selecting and his own editing. Thus, classification of colloids under the liquid-in-gas heading ends with the tonnage of solid material deposited over Pittsburgh; Thoenes’ hypothesis runs to mathematics and ends with Liesegang rings; and the Donnan equilibrium concludes in Mendelian inheritance. And yet I do not myself object to such rambling presentation, for growing science is perhaps that way. Gortner attacks this half of his volume, as the rest, in the most modest of fashions. But the result is a lack of dogmatism which as a textbook will not make catchy reading for the beginner. The more advanced worker will also have to be careful. Gortner tries so hard to do justice to all workers that he does justice to very few. Hardly any contribution to pure or applied colloid chemistry fails of notice in Gortner’s hands, but John Smith’s discoveries and ideas are as cordially treated as those of Bill Jones, with the result that suspension, emulsion, and electrical and solution theories of colloids chase each other all over the pages. Typical colloids are strictly crystalline in one chapter and hallowed by the Donnan equilibrium in another, and fibers, micelles (ionic or not, as the case may be), or droplets with interfaces, surface tension, and isoelectric points, or just plain chemistry try without avail to sleep in a common bed. Himself an advocate of the “colloid” point of view in biology, he nevertheless digs up osmotic pressure, dissociation constants, equilibrium in aqueous systems, the sacred bulls CH and pH, and all the other paraphernalia of old-line “dilute solution” chemists whose Saturday afternoon excursions into biology went on the rocks thirty years ago. Since the chemistry of living matter was first handled as a separate fraction in science, and long before it was baptized “biochemistry,” its protagonists have pretty well thrown themselves into one of two groups, the one of which (the parents usually) has tried to evolve a mental concept of why and how it all comes about, while the other has brought an ever increasing set of methods, analyses, and corrections in the fourth decimal point without any regard as to where such perfectly good bricks might belong in the temple of knowledge. In so far as this volume allies itself with this historic picture of physiological chemistry it tends very largely to place itself in the second group. Several hundred pages are nothing but lists of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats with their structural formulas, methods of isolation, and tests as are found in any chemical dictionary. Fischer’s work on the proteins, peptides, and sugars, while still treated as pure chemistry, is better handled than in most books of this sort; the theories of protein structure are listed; and the acid and alkali combining powers of the proteins take up a chapter (all but the fact that they do being probably wrong). While somewhat out of patience (in the preface) with medical men in biochemistry, Gortner has a chapter on anaphylaxis (which ends with colic), hemolysis (which ends in criminology), and complement fixation (which ends in typhoid). The chapters on the carbohydrates open, for some strange reason, with a discussion of optical rotation, to be followed at once by the work of Baly and others on photosynthesis, the two constituting a n introduction to more than a hundred pages of practically pure sugar chemistry. The subject is, of course, good chemistry, but this is a volume on biochemistry. Physiologists who try to think of living matter as something which involves both plants and animals will welcome the discussion of the celluloses, pectins (written by J. J. Willaman), tannins, and vegetable pigments. The chapters on the fats and fatlike
January, 1930
INDUSTRIAL AA’D EXGINEERING CHEMISTRY
bodies are again straight chemistry. The volume concludes with chapters on the vitamins (written by Leroy S.Palmer) and enzymes. There is no word about the history of the discovery of the vitamins and very little about the first workers and the first experimental findings in this field. The discussion of the enzymes brings nothing really new. Gortner rightly stresses the importance of his references to the literature in order that his students may be led to the original sources; but the original sources run too largely to items printed since 1920 and too often turn out to be, not the work of first masters in a field, but reviews or laboratory sheets of the latest candidate for a Ph.D. degree.-MARTIN H. FISCHER Applied Inorganic Analysis. With Special Reference to the Analysis of Metals, Minerals, and Rocks. BY W. F. HILLEBRAND AND G. E. F. LUNDELL. 929 pages. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1929. Price, $8.50. Every chemist who has used the technic or results of the late Doctor Hillebrand-and what one has not?-owes a deep debt of gratitude to Doctor Lundell for making available the methods of the great master of rock and mineral analysis, so that it will no longer be quite so necessary t o go to the original literature or government bulletins t o consult his reports. A service is rendered alike to chemists, mineralogists, metallurgists, geologists, engineers, and all who work with rocks, minerals, ores, or metals in any of their scientific aspects or practical applications The work is divided into five parts. The first part, under the title of “General Considerations,” deals with apparatus and reagents; with common operations such as sampling rind weighing; with the choice of method and preparation of the solution for analysis; with precipitation and separation of the sulfides; with precipitation by varying the pH by means of ammonium hydroxide, basic acetate, sodium succinate, suspension of carbonates or oxides, sodium hydroxide; with the succeeding operations of handling a precipitate by filtering, washing, drying, igniting; and with a number of special operations. The last chapter of Part I is devoted to volumetric analysis. Part I1 gives the details of the determination of the more common elements (sixty in all). Part I11 contains much of the material with which one usually associates the name of Hillebrandnamely, silicate rock analysis-which is treated in considerable detail through more than 150 pages. Part IV is devoted to the analysis of carbonate rocks. Part V gives some miscellaneous methods for such materials as soda-lime glass, bauxite, or highalumina refractories. The book appears to have been done with the greatest care, and is replete with literature references covering a wide range of material over a necessarily long period of time. The division of space between the descriptions of more or less elementary operations, on the one hand, and theory and special methods, on the other, is probably that dictated from the practical rather than the didactic viewpoint, as indicated by the title. Accuracy such as has been attained by the authors can be reached only through constant attention to the minutest details of analytical procedure and technic. It is particularly in these regards that the book is a treasure house of information and experience.-s. e. I,IND Physiological Chemistry. BY RUSSELLC. ERB. 402 pages. The Chemical Publishing Company, Easton, Pa., 1929. Price, $4.50. This new addition to the collection of textbooks in physiological chemistry is a more or less clever compilation of material dealing with the composition of the essential biochemical substances and the process of digestion. The book is not devoid of merit, but it adds nothing that is new either in the matter of presentation or in the viewpoints which would really give a physiological flavor to this chemistry. The author’s avowed ambition is to “teach ideas and generalities,” but it is very doubtful if he succeeded in more than onehalf, the latter half, of his undertaking. It is also his purpose that the book should be suitable for students just studying chemistry and for those who wish to extend their knowledge by specializing in the field of physiological chemistry. It is the reviewer’s opinion that beginning students will find this book very undigestihle unless supplemented with intelligent guidance, and those capable of providing this guidance will hardly look to this treatise for their inspiration. To the student with an urge to extend his elementary knowledge of physiological chemistry this book will have nothing t o offer. This is just one more physiological chemistry, but considering that there are already several textbooks covering the same range of subjects, and doing it much better, the usefulness of this book may rightly be questioned.
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Although textbooks are not supposed to be classics of literary style, it is t o be greatly deplored that any book should be published lacking completely in this quality. We may quote a single example to illustrate this point: “Hunger is an organic state or localized sensation produced by the stomach when i t is ready for food. It is a sensation that expresses an organic need, in short, nourishment. Eating is a response to hunger and the end result is food in the stomach.” Such examples could be multiplied. Crude misspellings, which, only in a mood of generosity, might be attributed to typographical er::rs, are not uncommon. We shall mention a few instances: Chemical messingers,’ “principle enzymes;” also the author’s own and rather unique terminology, such as “in uilo,” “chlorionic villi,” “laboratorian,” etc. I n discussing the phenomenon of mutarotation (“optional activity,” which obviously is a typographical but unfortunately uncorrected error), the author makes the surprising comment: “The a-glucose a t first has a specific rotation of + l l O o , which gradually falls to 252.5’. The &glucose begins with a specific and gradually increases to +52.5”.”-S. rotation of f19 MORGULIS Dry-cleaning and Dyeing Handbook. BY C. C. HUBBARD. 252 pages. Published by C. C. Hubbard, Rock Crest, Silver Spring, Md. Price, $5.00. This is a book for the hand of the craftsman and the desk of the work’s manager. Its ten sections deal with dry-cleaning practice, stain removal, wet-cleaning practice, bleaching and stripping, dyestuff application, finishes, tests, tables, definitions, and useful information. A notable feature, and one that is absolutely new, is the listing of over five hundred stains and the indication of the method for removing each. The author’s long and wide experience as a dry cleaner and dyer and his work in connection with the Bureau of Standards have enabled him to give to the craft a compendium of most of the facts commonly known to the business, which by its thoroughness and reliability renders its predecessors obsolete. It is a high water mark of craftsmanship information, but because it is necessarily empirical the technology of dry cleaning must begin where this book leaves off, Because no two jobs are exactly alike dry cleaning and dyeing is an art and the genius of the worker can never be dispensed with. For this reason the cleaning and dyeing industry offers an attractive field for the young chemist because only the chemist can supply the fundamental knowledge, like colloidal chemistry for instance, which will unite the craftsman and the chemist in one person. To the chemist desiring to investigate the possibilities and the opportunities offered by the industry, this book is indispensable and richly suggestive.-E. B. LEARY Atlas Metallographicus. A Collection of Photomicrographs A N D ANGELICA with Descriptions. BY HEINRICH HANEMANN SCHRAEDER.Lieferung 3, Tafel 17-24. Price, 7.60 marks. Price, 6.75 marks. Lieferung Lieferung 4, Tafel 25-32. 5, Tafel 33-40. Price, 6.75 marks. Gebriider Borntraeger, Berlin, 1929. Subscription price for Lieferungen 1-5, 35.35 marks. The purpose of this collection of micrographs is to bring together a complete series of typical examples of the various structures found in metals and alloys. Professor Hanemann began the collection of his specimens in 1910 in the interests of his pupils at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin, and since then has added to i t considerably. When completed, the atlas will consist of approximately 7500 micrographs arranged in 30 sections of 8 tables, each forming the most comprehensive assembly of micrographs in the literature. The first two sections (Tables 1t o 16) appeared in 1927 and were reviewed in IND. ENG.CHEM., 20, 448 (1928). Three more are now available (Tables 17 to 40). The new sections, with one or two exceptions, are devoted to plain, hypo-eutectoid steels in the unworked condition. Each micrograph is accompanied by a complete description of the nature and treatment of the specimen. About 24 pages of Section I11 are devoted t o explanatory matter pertaining to the various modifications of the primary and secondary structures of these steels as cast and their relationship to one another. There are also 6 pages describing the effect of thermal treatment on the microstructure and fracture. The careful preparation and excellent reproduction of these micrographs by a photographic method make them an extremely valuable addition to any metallurgical library.-W. H. BASSETT AND H. F. SILLIMAN
