Abstract
IN his Jubilee Memorial Lecture of the Society of Chemical Industry delivered before the Yorkshire Section at Leeds on November 6, Dr. C. H. Desch took as his subject ” Metals in the Chemical Industry”. The range of both ferrous and non-ferrous metals available for the purposes of chemical industry has been immensely widened in recent years. Resistance to chemical attack is one of the first considerations, and as no one material is resistant to all chemical agents, a choice must be made in each instance, for which ample data now exist. Corrosion fatigue, caused by the simultaneous action of fluctuating stress and of a chemical agent, is quite different from the sum of the actions of fatigue and corrosion, and is responsible for many unexpected failures. Special conditions arise where high temperatures and pressures are involved. Resistance to ‘creep’ is required as well as chemical resistance, and internal changes may cause progressive weakening. Not only chemical composition, but also texture, determine the degree of resistance to all these factors. The qualities of metals required for chemical purposes may be improved by (a) the elimination of impurities, (6) adding other metals in such quantities as to produce substantially new alloys, or (c) adding very small quantities of foreign elements which produce an effect great in proportion to their amount.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Metals in the Chemical Industry. Nature 136, 751–752 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136751d0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136751d0