Electroplating stout metals with aluminum was described at the Chicago
Institute of the American Chemical Society last week. If the process
should become practicable commercially, housewifery and industry will
benefit by inestimable billions. Pots, pans, vats, machines exposed to
corrosives will be protected by a skin of aluminum, metal highly
resistant to mos.t acids and alkalies.Professor Donald Babcock Keyes of the University of Illinois told the
chemists at Chicago that the process is practicable. He invented it,
although other scientists academic and industrial have worked on the
problem and made reports in scientific journals. Professor Keyes'
pronouncements always carry weight. Onetime director of
research for the U. S. Industrial Alcohol Co., he is generally listed
among the 175 leading chemists of the U. S. His assistant in the
aluminum research was Dr. Sherlock Swan Jr.Other chemists as learned as Professor Keyes, however, doubt the
practicability of his electroplating with aluminum. He takes an
aluminum salt , dissolves it in an organic
solution , submerges
the object to be coated, and through both solution and object passes a
direct electric current. The procedure is very difficult to carry
through, is expensive—and so probably not generally useful. Aluminum
Co. of America is not using it.Nor is Aluminum Co. of America using three other suggested methods of
shielding base metals against corrosives with aluminum. One of these is
mightily to press thin sheets of aluminum against sheets of steel.
Workability here is limited. Germans are using this process in a
semi-commercial way. Another is to heat iron and steel in contact with
aluminum. This calorizing process helps prevent
oxidation, but reputedly little else. Lastly there is spraying
objects—of wood, paper, metal, etc.—with aluminum particles. An
aluminum wire is fed through an electric arc whence an air blast blows
the melting aluminum against its carrier object, just as paint or
lacquer is blown. This produces a porous aluminum
coating little protective against acids.Aluminum Co. of America prefers to refine metallic aluminum and sells
its product as sheets, tubing, wire and rods for manufacturers to
machine. Persuading artificers to adopt aluminum has always been
difficult. So the company has been obliged to pioneer, to prove to
others that aluminum things are saleable.
