Edgar Arthur Ashcroft (5 September 1864 – 24 August 1938) was an Australian electrical engineer who developed an electrolytic process for extracting zinc metal from its sulphides.

History

Ashcroft was born in

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is a port at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most p ...

, England, a son of George Ashcroft and his wife Sophia, née Davey.J. W. Turner, 'Ashcroft, Edgar Arthur (1864–1938)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ashcroft-edgar-arthur-5067/text8449, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 3 January 2019. After qualifying as a mechanical and electrical engineer, he was brought out to Australia by Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd to install an electric lighting plant at its

Broken Hill Broken Hill is a city in the Far West (New South Wales), far west region of outback New South Wales, Australia. An inland mining city, it is near the border with South Australia on the crossing of the Barrier Highway (A32) and the Silver City Hi ...

facilities. While there, he and John Howell developed a steam generator using slag from the smelters as a source of heat. He was impressed with the vast quantities of

zinc sulphide Zinc sulfide (or zinc sulphide) is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula of ZnS. This is the main form of zinc found in nature, where it mainly occurs as the mineral sphalerite. Although this mineral is usually black because of various i ...

tailings at the mines, regarded as waste due to the expense and complexity of existing methods of extracting zinc metal from the ore. Collaborating with one Dr. Carl Schnabel of

Clausthal Clausthal-Zellerfeld () is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located in the southwestern part of the Harz mountains. Its population is approximately 15,000. The town hosts the Clausthal University of Technology. The health resort is locat ...

, Germany, he developed a wet electrolytic method of extracting the metal, which he patented in 1894. He left BHP and in 1895 founded the Sulphide Corporation (Ashcroft Process) Limited with a capital of £1,100,000, with which it purchased Ashcroft's patents and the Broken Hill Central Mine. In 1897, Ashcroft and the corporation set up the world's first electrolytic zinc works at Cockle Creek, near Newcastle, New South Wales. The process failed to live up to expectations however. The problems involved in up-scaling had been minimized, and the benefits exaggerated. Despite major modifications under general managers Randolph Adams and from 1897

C. F. Courtney Charles Frederick Courtney (23 November 1856 – 27 September 1941) was an English-Australian metallurgist, manager of the Sulphide Corporation, a mining and chemical manufacturing company in Australia. Early life and education C. F. Courtney wa ...

, the process was deemed a failure and the plant largely dismantled. The Sulphide Corporation continued in the business of refining zinc ore, but reverted to the roasting method. Ashcroft returned to England amid controversy, and with James Swinburne continued experimentation, but despite being based on sound scientific principles, commercial success eluded them. Ashcroft retired to Ancrum House,

Roxburghshire Roxburghshire or the County of Roxburgh () is a historic county and registration county in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. It borders Dumfriesshire to the west, Selkirkshire and Midlothian to the northwest, and Berwickshire to the north. T ...

, Scotland, and died in nearby

Polton Polton is a village located in Lasswade parish, Midlothian, Scotland, anciently a superiority of the Ramsay family, cadets of Dalhousie. In 1618 David Ramsay of Polton was in possession. (See: ''Analecta Scotica'', Edinburgh, 1834). Notable res ...

, survived by his wife Irene, née Dulier.

Postscript

Sulphide Corporation Ltd. went into voluntary liquidation in 1950, and was taken over by Sulphide Corporation Pty. Ltd., created for the purpose, a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Zinc.

Memberships

Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) provides services to professionals engaged in all facets of the global minerals sector and is based in Carlton, Victoria, Australia. History The Institute had its genesis in 1893 with ...

*(London)

Institution of Mining and Metallurgy The Institution of Mining and Metallurgy (IMM) was a British research institution, founded in 1892. Members of the Institution used the post-nominals MIMM. In 2002, it merged with The Institute of Materials (IOM) to form the Institute of Materials, ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashcroft, Edgar 1864 births 1938 deaths Australian metallurgists 19th-century Australian inventors Australian chemical engineers Australian electrical engineers People from Sunderland