He was born in
Brooklyn,
New York and educated at the
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, then at the
Columbia University School of Mines. He left without a degree and in 1879 joined his brother, E. B. Castner, as a consulting chemist. He left this business around 1884 and worked to devise a process for manufacturing
aluminium by reducing
aluminium chloride with
sodium. Sodium was relatively expensive at that time and Castner devised a process of producing it by the reduction of
caustic soda with
carbon, a much cheaper process. He failed to interest American industrialists and travelled to England in 1886. In 1887 his process helped to lead to the formation of the
Aluminium Company in England which produced aluminium of high purity. However, in 1889 it was rendered obsolete by a much cheaper
electrochemical process. Castner's only asset then was his cheap sodium and he worked to develop uses for this, including the manufacture of
sodium peroxide, a
bleaching agent, and
sodium cyanide which was used in the
gold mining industry. Castner suffered from
tuberculosis and died in 1899 in
Saranac Lake,
Franklin county, New York state. He did not have any children. ==See also==