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Saltpeter military9/14/2023 ![]() ![]() After the German fleet was destroyed in the Battle of the Falkland Islands, the exports to Britain resumed. At the beginning of World War I, German Admiral Maximilian Reichsgraf von Spee commanded a fleet of ships off the coast of Chile in an attempt to disrupt Chile saltpeter supplies to everyone else. For example, in 1912, Germany imported 37.9 % of all Chile saltpeter exports, England had 5.7% and the rest of Europe had 31.6%, which means that Germany alone imported more than all of Europe combined! The United States imported about 23.6% of Chile saltpeter exports during the same year. Before the war, Germany was the largest market for Chilean saltpeter. Before 1914, only one-fifth of Chilean nitrates were used for explosives, but after the war started, almost four-fifth of all nitrate exports were used for military purposes. Then the remaining potassium nitrate crystals are dried and ready to be used for gunpowder production.ĭuring the First World War, demand for Chilean nitrate exports skyrocketed. The crystals still contain a fair amount of sodium chloride, so they are purified by washing in cold water, which dissolves most of the sodium chloride, but leaves most of the potassium nitrate undissolved, which reduces the percentage of sodium chloride to below 0.05 percent. The crystals are then drained and washed with the liquors from the next crystallization using a centrifuge. The solution is kept stirred while it cools, so that the potassium nitrate may form smaller crystals. Since sodium chloride crystals don't dissolve as well in hot water, a good amount of it gets filtered out, while the potassium nitrate (which dissolves well in hot water) passes through in the solution. ![]() Then it is run through a filter into shallow cooling tanks. The liquid is boiled for about half an hour to complete the reaction as much as possible and convert most of the salts to sodium chloride and potassium nitrate. This fact is exploited to filter out the crystals of the other salts out. At low temperatures, potassium nitrate has the least solubility. it dissolves easily in water), but sodium chloride has the least solubility. As it happens, when the temperature of the solution is high, potassium nitrate has the highest rate of solubility (i.e. Due to the chemical reactions, the solution can now contain four possible salts: sodium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate. In a heated and concentrated mother liquor, sodium nitrate (about 95% pure from the chile saltpeter) and potassium chloride (greater than 80% purity, from the carnallite) are dissolved. ![]()
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