Frederick Gardner Cottrell

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Frederick Gardner Cottrell

Frederick Gardner Cottrell (born January 10, 1877 in Oakland , California , † November 16, 1948 in Berkeley , California) was an American chemist and inventor . He was considered a leading researcher of his time and was an important promoter of science. He is in the electrochemistry by his namesake Cottrell equation known as the inventor primarily for his development of the electrodeposition , which is considered the most efficient method for depositing dusts and mists from stack gases and process gases.

academic education

Cottrell graduated from high school at the age of 16 and enrolled in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1896 he completed the course as a Bachelor (BS). After a year of university work in Berkeley, he taught at Oakland High School for another three years, after which he continued his studies in Germany. His path first led him to the University of Berlin where he studied with Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff . Later he moved to the University of Leipzig to Wilhelm Ostwald . Here he earned his doctorate in 1903 with an excellent rating (“ summa cum laude ”) because his work solved a problem that was considered a challenge at the time.

After his return to the USA he worked as a lecturer in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1906 to 1911 as an assistant professor .

Cottrell's work

Frederick Gardner Cottrell is known in electrochemistry for the Cottrell equation derived from him and therefore named after him , which describes the time dependence of a current in the event of a potential jump, see chrono amperometry . It can be used in electroanalysis to determine concentration, but is mostly used to determine the diffusion coefficient .

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

More important, however, was his role as the inventor of the electrostatic precipitator for the separation of particles from gases. These apparatus are commonly used to reduce emissions from flue gases from power plants, dusts from cement kilns and other industrial sources.

While industrial fireplaces became a common sight at the turn of the century, Frederick Cottrell stated that it would be desirable to curb increasing air pollution, but also that valuable raw materials were released into the atmosphere with the unwanted smoke gases.

In 1906, DuPont hired Cottrell as a consultant to solve sulfuric acid manufacturing problems in their Pinole, California, powder mills . The contact process used here to produce sulfuric acid also produced arsenic , which clogged the catalysts . Cottrell concluded that a centrifuge would remove the arsenic from the sulfuric acid mist. The sulfuric acid mist thus purified then had to be separated out. He performed his first attempts at electrostatic deposition at the University of California, Berkeley, to electrically charge mist droplets which then migrated to the opposite electrode where they could be collected. This gave him an introduction to the problem of reducing emissions.

In 1907 he applied for the patent "Art of Separating Suspended Particles from Gaseous Bodies" for an apparatus that led rectified high voltage to a spray electrode, which transferred the electrical charge to dust particles in passing vapors. These charged dust particles were then attracted to an electrode with an opposite charge, where they could be collected and recovered as valuable raw materials.

In 1907, Cottrell had the opportunity to use the electrostatic apparatus he had developed in a different process: a court in Solano County , California, had sentenced the Selby smelter to purify the high -sulfur smoke from its melting furnaces. The lead particles have already been filtered out through a bag filter consisting of 2,000 woolen tubes, each ten meters in length. The sulfuric acid mist could also be separated and recovered using Cottrell's electrostatic separator.

Cottrell later installed similar equipment in a copper smelter and cement plant . In addition, he adapted his method of separating substances by means of electrical high voltage for the separation of emulsions. It was used to remove water from California oil and thus increase its market value, which - like removing dust from exhaust gases - proved to be a lucrative business.

Cottrell's electrostatic precipitator, known simply as "Cottrell" at the time, used high voltage to separate 90 to 98% of the ash , dust and acid that industrial chimneys spat into the air at the time.

Electrostatic deposition has been a reliable technology since its early beginnings in the early years of the 20th century. Today, electrostatic precipitators are mainly used in large power plants, cement works, incineration plants and in industry for gas cleaning.

In 1911 he moved from university to the US Bureau of Mines , where he finally became director in 1919. There he worked in the process development of the war programs z. B. the binding of nitrogen for explosives (since the USA at the time did not have any facilities that used the Haber-Bosch process ) and to extract helium from the air.

From 1922 to 1930 he worked as director of the “Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory” in the Ministry of Agriculture, which successfully developed a catalyst for a Haber- like process.

Cottrell founded the Research Corporation in 1912 with the help of Charles Walcott , then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution . The Research Corporation should publicly exploit Cottrell's and other patents and share them with the scientific community in a monetary way. Before World War II, when government support for scientific research was low, the Research Corporation provided much-needed capital such as E.g. for Ernest Lawrence's development of the cyclotron and Robert Goddard's rocket experiments.

As early as 1902, at a meeting in Ostwald's house, a discussion on international languages ​​aroused Cottrell's interest in this subject. Cottrell became a proponent of an international auxiliary language and led a committee on it. In 1923 he won Alice Vanderbilt Morris for this project. In 1924 they co-founded the International Auxiliary Language Association IALA, which developed the planned language Interlingua . Cottrell was director of IALA from its founding in 1924 until his death in 1948.

Private life

In 1904, Cottrell married Jessie M. Fulton from San Francisco. The two children of this marriage died early.

Awards and other honors

Cottrell received the Perkin Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry in 1919 , the Willard Gibbs Medal of the American Chemical Society ACS in 1920 , the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers in 1924, and the Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1937 . In 1938 Cottrell was accepted into the American Philosophical Society and in 1939 into the National Academy of Sciences . In 1940 he was selected by the National Association of Manufacturers in a list of the 19 greatest American inventors. In 1977, the hundredth year after Cottrell's birthday, the asteroid (2026) Cottrell was named after him. In addition, Cottrell was inducted into the Alpha Chi Sigma Hall of Fame in 1982 and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1992 . The Research Corporation has presented the Cottrell Scholar Award since 1994.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harry James White: Frederick Gardner Cottrell 1877-1948 . In: Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association . tape 27 , no. July 7 , 1977, ISSN  0002-2470 , pp. 680-681 , doi : 10.1080 / 00022470.1977.10470476 .
  2. ↑ Chr. Gg. Enke: dedusting industrial gases with electrostatic precipitators. HJ White (translated from English) - 336 p., 195 fig. U. 43 tab. (16.5 × 23 cm / 1969) - VEB Deutscher Verlag für Grundstoffindindustrie, Leipzig - artificial leather: 48 DM . In: Materials and Corrosion . tape 21 , no. June 6 , 1970, ISSN  1521-4176 , pp. 532-532 , doi : 10.1002 / maco.19700210624 ( wiley.com ).
  3. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Frederick Gardner Cottrell at academictree.org, accessed on 28 January 2018th
  4. ↑ a b Frederick Gardner Cottrell: The residual current in galvanic polarization, viewed as a diffusion problem . In: Wilhelm Ostwald, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (ed.): Journal for physical chemistry . 42U, no. 4 . Wilhelm Engelmann / De Gruyter, October 1, 1903, ISSN  2196-7156 , p. 385-415 , doi : 10.1515 / zpch-1903-4229 ( online in the Internet Archive ).
  5. ↑ a b Forrest F. Cleveland: Cottrell Samaritan of Science. Frank Cameron. New York: Doubleday, 1952. 403 pp .; index. $ 4.50 . In: Science . tape 115 , no. 2995 , May 23, 1952, ISSN  0036-8075 , p. 579 , doi : 10.1126 / science.115.2995.579 .
  6. ↑ a b Vennevar Bush: Frederick Gardner Cottrell 1877-1948 . A Biographical Memoir. Ed .: National Academy of Sciences (=  National Academy Biographical Memoirs . Volume 27 ). Washington 1952, OCLC 11829961 , p. 1–11 (English, nasonline.org [PDF; 876 kB ; accessed on October 26, 2017]).
  7. ↑ Patent US895729 : Art of separating suspended particles from gaseous bodies. Applied July 9, 1907 , published August 11, 1908 , Applicant: International Precipitation Company, Inventor: Frederick Gardner Cottrell. ‌
  8. ^ Joseph A. Holmes, Edward Curtis Franklin, Ralph Amos Gould: Report of the Selby Smelter Commission . Ed .: Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines (= Bureau of Mines [Ed.]: Bulletin . Volume 98 ). Government Printing Office, Washington 1915, OCLC 669340412 , p. 16–19 (English, hawaii.edu [PDF; 32.8 MB ; accessed on October 26, 2017]): “The process is known as the“ Cottrell electrical precipitation process. ” It was found experimentally that the Cottrell process effectually precipitated these fumes, and the installation of a plant sufficient in size to handle all of them completely eliminated this element from the visible smoke issuing from the plant. […] The efficiency of the Cottrell-process apparatus, which amounts to 99.5 per cent, eliminates any source of nuisance or injury from the parting-retort stack […] All of the sulphuric-acid fume coming from the parting retorts is passed through the Cottrell-process apparatus and is condensed to liquid sulphuric acid. "
  9. ^ Frederick Gardner Cottrell: Recent progress in electrical smoke precipitation . A paper presented at the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress and reprinted in permission. In: The Engineering and Mining Journal . tape 101 , no. 9 . Hill Publishing Co., New York February 26, 1916, p. 385–392 (English, online in the Internet Archive - early review on electrodeposition ): “Installation on the copper converters at the Garfield smeltery, near Salt Lake City, Utha, […] at the plant of the Riverside Portland Cement Co. […] ] in the summer of 1911 [...] was begun at these works [...] finished in January, 1913 [...] maintaining over 95% recovery of the dust ”
  10. ↑ Patent US987116 : Apparatus for separating and collecting particles of one liquid suspended in another liquid. Filed October 12, 1910 , published March 21, 1911 , Applicant: Petroleum Rectifying Co, Inventor: Frederick Gardner Cottrell, James Buckner Speed. ‌
  11. ^ A b Albert B. Costa: A matter of life and breath: Frederick Gardner Cottrell and the Research Corporation . In: Journal of Chemical Education . tape 62 , no. 2 , February 1985, ISSN  0021-9584 , p. 135-136 , doi : 10.1021 / ed062p135 .
  12. ↑ a b Frank J. Esterhill: Interlingua Institute . a history. Ed .: Interlingua Institute. The Institute, New York 332 Bleecker St 2000, ISBN 0-917848-02-0 , pp. 2–3 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  13. ^ A b Mary Bray: Frederick Gardner Cottrell. In: biographias. Union Mundial pro Interlingua, December 29, 2006, accessed October 28, 2017 .
  14. ^ The Mining and Metallurgical Society of America. (PDF) The Mining and Metallurgical Society of America MMSA, January 2008, accessed October 20, 2017 .
  15. ^ Holley Medal - Holley Medalists. In: Achievement Awards. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers ASME, 2016, accessed October 20, 2017 .
  16. ^ Member History: Frederick G. Cottrell. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 28, 2018 .
  17. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Ed .: International Astronomical Union, Commission 20. 5th revised edition. tape  1 . Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-540-00238-3 , (2026) Cottrell, p. 164 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-29718-2 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 26, 2017]): “in the centennial of his birth [...] his valuable electrostatic precipitation rights ”
  18. ↑ (2026) Cottrell = 1951 EL1 = 1955 FF = 1972 TE1. The Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 2017, accessed October 20, 2017 .
  19. ^ Alpha Chi Sigma Hall of Fame. (PDF) Alpha Chi Sigma, accessed October 20, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Frederick G. Cottrell. (No longer available online.) In: Find An Inductee. National Inventors Hall of Fame, 2016, archived from the original on February 2, 2017 ; accessed on October 20, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.invent.org
  21. ^ Cottrell Scholar Award. Research Corporation For Science Advancement, accessed October 29, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Cottrell, Frederick Gardner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Oakland , California
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1948
Place of death Berkeley , California