NEW CEMENT AND BUILDING MATERIAL.

Southland Times, Issue 863, 11 December 1867, Page 3

NEW CEMENT AND BUILDING MATERIAL.

In a communication to the French Academy of Sciences, M. Sorel describes a new cement being a basic hydrated oxychloride of magnesium. It is obtained by slacking magnesia with a solution of chloride of magnesium in a more or less concentrated state. The denser the solu.tion the harder it become 3on drying. This magnesian cement is the whitest and hardest of all those known to this day, and it can be moulded like plaster, in which case the cast acquires the hardness of marble. It will take any color, and has been used by the inventor for mosaics, imitations of ivory billiard-balls, &c. The new cement possessses the agglutinative property in the highest degree, so that solid masses may be made with it at a very low cost by mixing it up on a large scale with substances of little value. One part of magnesia may be incorporated with upwards of twenty parts of sand, limestone, and other inert substances, so as to form hard blocks ; while lime and other cements will hardly admit of the incorporation of two or three times their weight of extraneous matter. By means of these artificial blocks, buildings may easily be carried on in places where materials for the purpose are scarce. All that is required is simply to convey a quantity of magnesia and chloride of magnesium to the spot, if there be none to be had there, and then to mix them up with sand, pebble, or any other matter of the kind close at hand ; blocks can then be made of any shape, and imitating hewn stone. This magnesian cement may be obtained at a very low cost, especially if the magnesia be extracted from the mother ley of saltworks, either by M. Balard's process, whereby magnesia and hydro-chloric acid are obtained at the same time, or else by decomposing the ley, which always contains a large proportion of chloride of magnesium, by means of quck-lime, which by double decomposition yields magnesia and chloride of lime containing a certain quantity of chloride of magnesium, and which, with the addition of various other cheap substances, may be used for whitewashing.