Edgar Arthur Ashcroft (5 September 1864 – 24 August 1938) was an Australian electrical engineer who developed an electrolytic process for extracting zinc metal from its sulphides.
[citation needed] He was impressed with the vast quantities of zinc sulphide tailings at the mines, regarded as waste due to the expense and complexity of existing methods of extracting zinc metal from the ore. Collaborating with one Dr. Carl Schnabel of Clausthal, Germany,[2] he developed a wet electrolytic method of extracting the metal, which he patented in 1894.
Despite major modifications under general managers Randolph Adams and from 1897 C. F. Courtney,[3] the process was deemed a failure and the plant largely dismantled.
Ashcroft returned to England amid controversy, and with James Swinburne continued experimentation,[4] but despite being based on sound scientific principles, commercial success eluded them.
Ashcroft retired to Ancrum House, Roxburghshire, Scotland, and died in nearby Polton, survived by his wife Irene, née Dulier.