Reconsidered

THE WORLD IS DESPERATELY SHORT OF SULPHUR Deposits in New Guinea and New Hebrides Should Now Be Reconsidered

CHOSE people who were somewhat amazed, a few months ago, to hear that a Sydney industrial chemist, fter an investigation of New Guinea’s ilphur deposits, had turned them down s commercially worthless must be even lore amazed now in the light of recent relations at to the extreme world short ge of sulphur.

In recent weeks sulphur has suddenly een elected to an honoured place as No.

World Shortage. Per medium of the ress, the populace is now being educated ) realise what it means in modern m ustry and this has come as a shock to le layman who formerly had only a ague idea of its place in the scheme of nngs. If you were young in grand tther’s day, then you can remember how rother “fumigated” by burning the stuff a the kitchen shovel; or maybe, if of the >otty variety, you were dosed with “brim ;one and treacle.” To others it is an dust or an ingredient of an gricultural spray. If you live in a vol inic area you will nave seen simple ilphur yourself and smelled sulphur gas.

Sulphur—that is the yellow powdery ibstance otherwise known as brimstone— not of much interest in itself: but jmbined with other elements in the form sulphuric acid, it is vital to the fertiliser, tplosive, enamelling, textile, paper, gal mising, plastics and other industries.

In Australia about 90 per cent, of the /ailable sulphuric acid is used in the Lanufacture of superphosphate from the iw rock phosphate of Nauru and Ocean iland. In its raw state, the phosphoric 3id is not available as a plant food and becomes so only after it has been treated ith sulphuric acid—the manufacture of iree tons of superphosphate uses a little tore than a ton of sulphuric acid.

At one time the world relied on Sicilian ilphur but in recent years the bulk of le world supply came from huge deposits l Louisiana and Texas in tne United bates. No other sulphur has been so ire and so cheap to produce and as a insequence all other methods of produc g sulphur have been neglected. Now, Dwever, the United States has announced lat there are no more than 25 years re aves of sulphur in sight. Already she limiting her exports to about one million ins and stock piling it herself. Her own iquirements have doubled since 1938. The insequence is that no country that has jpended upon the United States for sul lur—and this includes the United King )m—is now getting as much sulphur as le wants. Australia’s requirements can 5 gauged by the fact that at present she producing about 1,600,000 tons of super losphate per annum from Nauru and cean Island and, based on present agri iltural methods and natural growth of jpulation and exports, the requirements i 1960 will be 2i million tons.

Shortage of US sulphur has already riously embarrassed UK industry—both ir civilian export requirements and for sr re-armament programme.

LS a result of this sudden difficulty in obtaining sulphur from the United States, all countries are now looking •r alternative sources of supply and most . them are turning to the manufacture sulphuric acid from deposits of pyrites -a source that has long been neglected L favour of cheap sulphur from Texas, s an added stimulous to this new de nopment, the price of Texas sulphur has

lately risen to such a level that it brings the manufacture of the acid from pyrites into the zone of practical economics.

In Australia, pyrites deposits have been located at Mt. Lyall in Tasmania, at Cap tain’s Flat in NSW, at Mt. Morgan in Queensland, in Western Australia and in South Australia. All are adding their quota to Australia’s sulphuric acid require ments. The acid is also produced from zinc concentrates at Broken Hill, at Mt.

Isa, at Captain’s Flat and at Roseberry, in Tasmania; and from gypsum by a German process—with cement as a by product—in South Australia.

In the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand, extensive, ex

periments are being made both in the manufacture of superphosphate and in obtaining other sources of supply of sul phuric acid. In the United Kingdom re search workers are experimenting with bacteria brought from the warm lakes of North Africa for the production of sulphur from sulphates and sulphides by a process of oxidization.

They have already produced sulphur by

this method in the laboratory and scien tists now forecast that it should be pos sible, using these bacteria, to produce as much as 250 tons of sulphur a week from a tank as large as a swimming pool.

This all leads us back to where we came in: With all this wild scramble after sup plies of sulphur and all the orthodox and unorthodox means of obtaining it, at any cost—can the natural deposits in New

Britain be simply written off as of ‘*nd commercial value?”

As Tolala said in March issue of PIM, the Japanese were interested in deposits at Matupi and Lolabau just before Pearl Harbour and seemed to consider them an economic phoposition—although Japan is further from Rabaul than is Sydney.

New Hebrides Deposits

DEPOSITS of sulphur are known to exist in the Banks Group which lie north-east of Santo and are included in the New Hebrides Condominium ad ministration. They were first discovered on Vanua Lava, in the Group, over 60 years ago and at the end of last century a French company attempted to work them but the project was abandoned.

An Australian company was formed in the 30’s and a party was sent to the island to prospect the deposits but nothing came of the plan to export sulphur.

A photograph elsewhere shows a section of the sulphur deposits at the summit of Mt. Surtamtit, Vanua Lava.

Both the Australian and French com panies investigated the deposits at a time when sulphur could be more easily ob tained elsewhere. But now that it has got to a stage where it has to be manu factured by wogs in a swimming pool, or recovered from Mt. Morgan flue gasses or produced in small quantities by the tem peramental miners of Captain’s Flat, NSW, one wonders why something could not be done to work the deposits of the south-west Pacific.

A daughter was born on March 29 to Mr. and Mrs. L. A. R. Collins, of Aleisa, W. Samoa. She has been named Lila Eileen Henrietta Mary Agnes Ao-lele.