Pedro Gamboni (September 26, 1825 - December 27, 1895) was a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

an chemical engineer who did important studies related to

saltpeter Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . This alkali metal nitrate salt is also known as Indian saltpetre (large deposits of which were historically mined in India). It is an ionic salt of potassium ions K+ and nitrat ...

and iodine in the regions of Tarapaca and

Antofagasta Antofagasta () is a port city in northern Chile, about north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. According to the 2015 census, the city has a population of 402,669. After the Spanish American wars ...

.Gamboni invented a new method to extract

nitrate Nitrate is a polyatomic ion A polyatomic ion, also known as a molecular ion, is a covalent bonded set of two or more atoms, or of a metal complex, that can be considered to behave as a single unit and that has a net charge that is not zer ...

from

caliche Caliche () is a sedimentary rock, a hardened natural cement of calcium carbonate that binds other materials—such as gravel, sand, clay, and silt. It occurs worldwide, in aridisol and mollisol soil orders—generally in arid or semiarid regions, ...

leading to the phasing out of the older firewood and labour intensive

paradas method The paradas method ( es, método de paradas, ''sistema de paradas'') was a process to extract nitrate from caliche by leaching. In this method caliche was boiled in water in large pans called "paradas". It was a firewood and labour-intensive proces ...

in the 1850s.

References

1825 births 1895 deaths Chilean chemical engineers Saltpeter works in Chile Chilean inventors {{Chile-scientist-stub