The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-23
INDUSTRIAL SCIENTISTS
 TRYING TO RIVAL NATURE
EFFORTS ToP AGAINST IMPENDING MATERIALs-sEARCH FOR A MEANS OF MAX AUTOMOBILING- EXPERIMENTAL LABORATORIES.

tort, consisting of a steel cylinder surrounded by a jacket into which steam superheated to an extremely high temperature is introduced. The cylinder Is filled with chips of pine | the dead wood as well as what Is called light wood" in the South light" not because of it's weight, Cor | 1t Is pieces of stumps and roots heavy with sap, but because 1t is thought 1t | only for kindllng fires.
 The tremendous heat from the steam jacket brings out of the chips every drop of liquid. and this is drawn off | through a pipe When 1t Is distilled | for the turpentine 1t contains, there is
 obtained. as a by-product, heavy oil. | the nature and possible usefulness of which are not yet known, since 1t does | not appear in the ordinary process of getting turpentine. So it seems per- fectly possible to obtain commercial
 product artiicially, in this case. The
 question that remains Is whether suf-
 hciently high grade turpentine can be
 made in this way economically enough
 to make it commercially worth while. | Perhaps the unknown oil will have con-
 siderable bearing on the question; at
 any rate. the experiment Is being
 watched with much interest
 | In another of the rooms of the Insti-
 tute's industrial chemistry department | an lnNbSllSdtOl iS StthlHE Spint | of improving the process of making
 paper pulp from wood so as to do away with the objectionable by-products which have in some states led to legis-
 lation that has very nearly been the | end locally of this kind of manufacture, 1 An enormous quantity of wood pulp paper Is used nowadays; what 1t
 amounts to you may imagine when you 1 think that every particle of newspaper,
 like that on which these words are
 printed, Is now made from the fibre Of | spruce trees, to say nothing of the
 many other kinds of paper with the | same basis.
 To obtain the fibre, blocks of wood
 are submitted to chemical treatment
 which extracts all the cementing ma l terial, called "lignin. that holds the
 woody particles together. The value
 less by-product of this process is dis | posed of by draining 1t away into a l brook or river, or pond. for if it is | emptied on the ground it hardens into 1 a gummy crust that is impervious to water and therefore will not disappear from the wearing of the clements The
 experlmenter's efforts are devoted first
 to making the residue less objection able and then to devising a way of
 withdrawing it into a furnace where it will be consumed as smoke Is. Burn | ing has been employed before but un- | less the fumes are burned as well as
 the residue that is no better than any
 other means of getting rid of this ap- | parently useless stuff. for the fumes
 are it's particularly objectionable fea-
 ture, and are spread further and In a
 more penetrating way in smoke than
 in the running stream.
 The industrial scientists problems come in a queer way. in anticipation of future possibilities, once in q while 1 Take, for example. the case of alcohol The cheapest kind of alcohol to pro- duce and that which is best for all pur- | poses is grain alcohol. but 1t is subject | to a government tax that makes it very expensive at retail. Wood alcO% | hol. which is used in a great many me | chanical processes because it can be | bought cheaper at retail. costs just about twice as much to make as grain alcohol. but 1t Is a poison and there IS not the same tax on 1t. It is really | by product in the manufacture of acetic | acid and various uses having been found for it. it makes possible the pro- ductiOn of acctic acid, which Is an im- l pOrtant element in many things, at a | living price"
 Should the present high tax ever be removed from grain alcohol, as 1t IS anticipated may happen in the not dis
 tant feature, the dhief advantage wood | alcohol now has-its economy-would disappear Its value would fall corre- spondnRly and the price of acetic acid would naturally rise, thereby affecting l indirectly great many other cheml-
 calls and through them many lines of
 industry. Consequently, Dr. Walker has one of hls young experimentars IT, the Institutes laboratory working | on a process of obtaining acetic acid l from grain alcohol, so that when the anticipated time comes IL can be made from the cheapened grain alcohol and thus maintain the state of its present commercial cost.
 Some years ago the supply of hem | lock bark was disappearing so rapidly
 that a substitute was sought for use in tanning shoe leather. Industrial chem | ists found a mineral tanning that works perfectly well with upper leath- CT but cannot be used for sole leather because it leaves it too pliable and porous. Now as hemlock is still more
 depleted. there Is the prospect that
 within a comparatively few years some