Eventually he found that bichloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate, as it was commonly called, gave the best results and, without revealing the nature of the process, he submitted a block of oak impregnated with that substance to the Admiralty in 1828.
Dr. Birkbeck gave a lecture upon it at the Society of Arts on 9 December 1834, and in 1835 the Admiralty published the report of a committee appointed by the board to inquire into the value of the new method.
A witty writer in 'Bently's Miscellany' for January 1837 told how the muses had adopted Kyan's improvement to preserve their favourite trees.
The timber used in building the Oxford and Cambridge Club, British Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, Westminster Bridewell, the new roof of the Temple Church, and the Ramsgate harbour works was also prepared by Kyan's process.
When wooden railway sleepers ("ties" in the USA) became general (in place of the stone blocks used on the early lines), a very profitable business for Kyan's company was anticipated, and for a time these hopes were realised.
The whaler John Palmer received some treated wood as she underwent repairs in 1833 and on her return to England from the Pacific in 1837 her master, Captain Elisha Clark, wrote a testimonial for the process.
The salt was somewhat expensive and Sir William Burnett's method of preserving timber by chloride of zinc, and afterwards the application of creosote for that purpose, proved severe competitors.
Doubts began to be expressed as to the real efficiency of kyanising (see Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 11 January 1853, pp.