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Cryolite is now melted by electricity. The white powder is put into it, and dissolves just as sugar dissolves in water. The electricity keeps on working, and now it separates the alumina into its two parts. The aluminum is a little heavier than the melted cryolite, and therefore it settles and may be drawn off at the bottom of the melting-pot. There are a good many reasons why aluminum is useful.
For seven or eight months he tried mixing the metal with various substances to see if it would not dissolve. At length he tried a stone from Greenland called "cryolite," which had already been used for making a kind of porcelain. The name of this stone comes from two Greek words meaning "ice stone," and it is so called because it melts so easily.
By 1908 America alone produced over 9,000 tons valued at over $500,000,000, while European manufacturers were also large producers. In 1888 the electrolytic manufacture of aluminum was commenced in America and in the following year it was begun in Switzerland. Aluminum is formed by the electrolysis of the aluminum oxide in a fused bath of cryolite and fluorspar.
Aluminium, the now well-known valuable metal, present in clay, bauxite, and a variety of other mineral substances, is electrolytically deposited from a bath of alumina obtained by dissolving bauxite either in potassium fluoride or in cryolite. Aluminium is now coming into extended use in the construction of long-distance electric power transmission lines.
The principal resources of the island are sealskins, eider-down, oil, and cryolite. Cryolite is a mineral from which common soda is easily extracted, and also from which the light silver-like aluminum was formerly prepared. The mines near the village of Ivigtut furnish practically the world's supply of this mineral. Formerly it was carried to Philadelphia, but in recent years not much is used.
The charcoal packing behind the carbon plates is required to confine the heat and to protect them from combustion. With this furnace, aluminum can be reduced directly from its ores; and chemical compounds from corundum, cryolite, clay, etc., and silicon, boron, calcium, manganese, magnesium, and other metals are in like manner obtained from their ores and compounds.
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