A certain proportion of soda ash (carbonate of soda) is also used in some works in sheet-glass mixtures, while " decolorizers " (substances intended to remove or reduce the colour of the glass) are also sometimes added, those most generally used being manganese dioxide and arsenic. Another essential ingredient of all glass mixtures containing sulphate of soda is some form of carbon, which is added either as coke, charcoal or anthracite coal; the carbon so introduced aids the reducing substances contained in the atmosphere of the furnace in bringing about the reduction of the sulphate of soda to a condition in which it combines more readily with the silicic acid of the sand.
It burns with a pale-blue flame forming silicon fluoride, silicofluoric acid and silicic acid.
But this basicity implies that for each part of the silica or silicic acid which inevitably results from the oxidation of the silicon of the pig iron, the cinder shall contain some three parts of iron oxide, itself a valuable and expensive substance.
If this be dissolved in water and the solution concentrated, some silicic acid separates and the filtrate deposits triclinic prisms of tungstosilicic acid.
Silicotungstic acid is obtained as quadratic pyramids from its mercurous salt which is prepared from mercurous nitrate and the salt formed on boiling gelatinous silicic acid with a polytungstate of an alkali metal.
