Leblanc Process - Industrial History

Industrial History

Leblanc established the first Leblanc process plant in 1791 in St. Denis. However, French Revolutionaries seized the plant, along with the rest of Louis Philip's estate, in 1794, and publicized Leblanc's trade secrets. Napoleon I returned the plant to Leblanc in 1801, but lacking the funds to repair it and compete against other soda works that had been established in the meantime, Leblanc committed suicide in 1806.

By the early 19th century, French soda ash producers were making 10,000 - 15,000 tons annually. However, it was in Britain that the Leblanc process became most widely practiced. The first British soda works using the Leblanc process was built by the Losh family of iron founders at the Losh, Wilson and Bell works in Walker on the River Tyne in 1816, but steep British tariffs on salt production hindered the economics of the Leblanc process and kept such operations on a small scale until 1824. Following the repeal of the salt tariff, the British soda industry grew dramatically, and the chemical works established by James Muspratt in Liverpool and Charles Tennant near Glasgow became some of the largest in the world. By 1852, annual soda production had reached 140,000 tons in Britain and 45,000 tons in France. By the 1870s, the British soda output of 200,000 tons annually exceeded that of all other nations in the world combined.