Cylinders, tanks and independent boilers should be encased in a non-conducting material such as silicate cotton, thick felt or asbestos composition.
Hartley has employed it with great success, and in cyanite (a silicate of aluminium) has found a material which is infusible at the temperature of this flame, and is therefore suitable to hold the substance which it is desired to examine.
Aluminium silicate is the chemical body of which all clays are nominally composed.
Minerals, like glauconite, which contain ferrous silicate, may in like manner yield limonite, on weathering.
About 1740 Benjamin Huntsman introduced the " crucible process " of melting steel in small crucibles, and thus freeing it from the slag, or rich iron silicate, with which it, like wrought iron, was mechanically mixed, whether it was made in the old forge or in the puddling furnace.