Arman Brinton, aged 10, of Sedona, Arizona for his question:
What is sulfur and how do we get it?
Most of the sulfur around us is invisible. It is part of this and that in our everyday lives. Its busy atoms join with other atoms to form countless different substances. There is sulfur in eggs, It combines with the metal of spoons to form black silver sulfite. This is why eggs tend to tarnish the silverware. There is sulfur in cabbage and in the protein foods that are so necessary to us.
Sulfur is a great worker, It helps in countless industries, It plays a part in making patper. It helps to make matches, firecrackers and gunpowder. Sulfur is used in vulcanizing rubber, In one form, it is murder on rats and insects. In another form it is the hypo used to develop photographs. In another form it is bleach. In other forma it is the green and blue vitriol used in dyeing textiles,
Pure sulfur was given to‑‑us by ancient volcanoes, In their heyday, these seething craters gave off sulfur gases. In time, these gases trapped below ground merged to form a solid yellow rock. This is sulfur in its natural state. People knew of this yellow stuff long ages ago. They called it brimstone, which means burning stone. For sulfur burns with a blue flame.
We would expect to find the world's supply of sulfur near ancient volcanoes. And so we do. There is sulfur in the Mediterranean region of Sicily. America also has great layers of buried sulfur. But for a long time it was a great problem to mine our sulfur. It is buried under layers of treacherous quicksand.
The buried layer of sulfur is called a dome. Our precious sulfur domes are in the Gulf regions of Texas and Louisiana. About fifty years ago a clever engineer figured how to get this sulfur from under the quicksand. This engineer’s name was Herman Frasch. Most of our sulfur is mined by the Frasch process,
Digging through quicksand. is impossible. So Frasch used a system of pipes, one inside the other. The outer pipe is a casing to holdback the sand from ‑a deep tunnel down to the sulfur dome. Inside this casing is a six‑inch pipe. Inside the six‑inch pipe is a three‑inch pipe and inside the three‑inch pipe is a one‑inch pipe.
Superheated steam is forced dorm the six‑inch pipe. It pours down and melts the rocky sulfur to a liquid. Hot compressed air is then forced down the little center pipe, This turns the molten sulfur into a light, frothy mass. It also forces it to bubble up and seek a way out. Up comes the molten, frothy sulfur in a golden geyser. At ground level, the sulfur is left to harden in great vats then it is broken up and shipped on its way to do its countless jobs in industry.