Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/652

 Hermann Kolbe at Marburg and went in 1856 to Heidelberg to work under Robert Wilhebn Bunsen. In 1859 he began his industrial career in a miniature soda-works at Ringkuhl near Cassel, where he began the researches that led to his sulphur recovery process ; he next became manager of a factory at Mainz for the production of acetic acid by wood distillation. Thence proceeding to Cologne, he worked there at the production of ammonia from waste leather. Subsequently he spent some time at other factories in Germany and Holland. He came to England in 1862 and took out an English patent for the recovery of sulphur from the Leblanc alkali-waste, by a method of partial oxidation and treatment with acid, and in 1863 he went to John Hutchinson & Co. at Widnes to perfect the process. In 1864 he took over the construction and management of a Leblanc soda-works at Utrecht, but returned to Widnes in 1867, entering into partnership with J. Hutchinson of Hutchinson & Earle in order to push his sulphur recovery process. From this time forward he was domiciled in England ; he became a naturalised British subject in 1880. M. Schaffner had invented a process somewhat similar to that of Mond almost simultaneously, and manufacturers in Widnes, Newcastle, and Glasgow for a number of years used a combination of Mond's and Schaffner's processes by which about 30 per cent, of the total sulphur was recovered from the alkali-waste. The process was also used in France ; but by 1894 the Mond and Schaffner processes were entirely replaced by the Claus-Chance process (G. Lunge, Sulphuric Acid and Alkali, 2nd edit. ii. 827-51). In 1872 Mond made the acquaintance of Ernest Solvay, a Belgian chemist, who had effected great improvements in a rival process to that of Leblanc, the ammonia-soda process which had been invented by Harrison Gray Dyer and John Hemming in 1838. Solvay had started a small factory at Couillet near Charleroi for working his process. Mond, with much searching of heart, invested his small capital derived from the sulphur recovery process, in purchasing the option to work Solvay's patents in England. He entered into partnership with Mr. (now the Rt. Hon. Sir) John Tomlinson Brunner, his friend since 1862, who had been in the commercial department of Hutchinson's works. Not without difficulty, the two men raised the capital necessary to start works at Winnington, near Northwich. The Solvay process was imperfect during the first year of the working at Winnington everything that could explode, exploded, and everjrthing that would break, broke ; but by ceaseless labour Mond by 1880 had succeeded in perfecting the process so that it became a financial success. In 1881 the concern was turned into a limited liability company, of which Mond remained a managing director till his death; and the firm of Brunner, Mond & Co. are now the largest alkali makers in the world, employing about 4000 workmen. The firm was one of the first to adopt an eight hours' day and to provide model dwellings and playing-fields for their work-people. Mond left 20,000l. in trust for the benefit of disabled and aged workpeople belonging to the firm.

In 1879 Mond returned to the problem of the production of ammonia, which was important for the use of its compounds as artificial manure. A series of investigations carried out with his assistant. Dr. Joseph Hawliczek, based on the use of cyanides, was not followed up industrially ; a further series carried out with Mr. G. H. Beckett, Dr. Carl Markel, and Dr. Adolf Staub led to the invention of the Mond producer-gas plant, which Mond patented in 1883, and continued to improve till the end of his life. By carefully regulating the temperature of a furnace in which air and steam are led over heated coal or coke, Mond succeeded in converting all the nitrogen of the fuel into ammonia,, which could easily be recovered, and generating at the same time a very cheap and useful form of producer-gas. Over three million tons of bituminous fuel, lignites, and peats are now used annually at Dudley Port, Staffordshire, and in other places in various parts of the world in the production of 'Mond-gas.' Mond's next step in 1885 was to try, with the help of Dr. Carl Langer, to convert the heat energy of fuel, and in particular of producer-gas directly into electrical energy by improving the gas battery invented by Sir William Robert Grove [q. v. Suppl. I]. The use of porous plates moistened with sulphuric acid and faced on either side with platinum and platinum black, to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen, led to interesting results ; but the inventors were unable to overcome the defects of the cells (of which they published an account in 1889). Mond, in connection with this work, carried out a series of researches with Sir William Ramsay and Dr. John Shields on the occlusion of hydrogen and oxygen by platinum and palladium (Phil. Trans.