Commercial Production of Electrolytic Iron

T HE production of pure iron by electrolyzing solutions of its salts has been the object of scientific curiosity and research for about 80 years; and in the last two decades a realization of the unusual physical and chemical qualities of electrolytic iron has turned the attention of chemists and metallurgists toward a commercial application of this accumulated knowledge. Thus Burgess and Hambuechen in America, . Cowper-Coles in England, and Fischer in Germany- devised methods, more or less successful, for the electrolytic refining of iron, but none of these processes has yet attained large-scale operation. During the war some interesting ,work was done in France and England on building up worn or defective machine parts by electrodeposition of iron. It remained for the Société "Le Fern in France to carry on the process commercially. For six years Les Fonderies et Forges. de Sainte-Maire et Gravigny and the works of Bouchayer & Viallet at Grenoble have manufactured pure-iron boiler tubes in competition with established practice. The French process originated in the researches of Anthelme Boucher in 1910, and was, not put into operation until several years of experimentation had passed.