Evening star., 1939-09-07
Of Stars, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Field, Laboratory
And Study

~ sSt0S 1oDVt0tOIy
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.
A new day may be about to dawn for
American cotton.
Prospects have been gloomy for the
last decade. World consumption has
been declining as economic conditions
have declined. national self sufhciency
ideals risen, and other cotton growing
areas developed. Even in the United
States the consumption has declined with
the rivalry of such synthetic hbers as
rayon.
The chemists of the South have come
to the rescue. King Cotton can survive
and perhaps become greater than ever
they predict-but not as a king. The
crop must sacrifice its royalty. No longer
nurture it, gently hand-pick it. Instead
it must sink almost to the level of plebian
hay, closely packed in the field, moved
with moving machine, thrown about
with pitchforks, ground ruthlessly into
pulp, and its once priced fiber disdained.
1t must come to that or very large
new cash crop must be developed for
the Southeastern United States, accord
ing to report of Drs. George c. Holroyd
and Frank K. Cameron of the University
of North Carolina.
whether we like it or not" they said,
"the decline in consumption of American
lint cotton seems destined to continue.
But the large and increasing industrial
demand for cellulose offers a potential
market for large percentage of the
country's production capacity, provided
the cost can be brought low enough to
make its use profitable"
Eventually, 1t may be, cotton will go
out entirely-as cotton. This, of course.
must wait upon the day when man-made
fbers are both better and cheaper than
natures fibers for all purposes. 1t is a
nightmare which the cotton grower must
face, however, unless the chemists are
able to find a way out for him-and
they themselves are confident this is
possible.
Study of the problem was started nine
years ago by DR.. Cameron of the Uni
versity of North Carolina To eliminate
the expense of manipulating and to
make available the cellulose in other
parts Of the plant as well as the lint,
the idea was conceived of moving the
entire plant in a manner similar to the
q ruocficp Nf fo ho
successful the majority of the cotton
bolls must be made to ripen smul-
taneously rather than over a period
of weeks as at present
1t was found that growing in closely
spaced rows with less than the usual
thinning, while resulting in smaller in
dividual plants, considerably fastened
maturity, with most of the bolls ripening
at one time. No attention was paid to
the length of staple, since in chemical
treatment such as the manufacture of
plastics or rayon the fibrous nature is
lost anyway.
Processing of the product involves re-
covery of the oil from the seeds and
utilization of the cellulose. The first step
Is to grind the plant SO as to crush the
seeds and break the stalks into pieces of
convenient size. The fluffy nature of the
ground mixture prevents removal of the
oil by pressing and it must be extracted
with chemical solvents.
The cellulose may be extracted from
the residue by several processes The
uyif1, u1,ich ic chol
gested that this step might be eliminated
and the cellulose derivatives obtained di-
rectly, particularly nitrocellulose and Gel
lulose acetate from which fabrics are
made. Nitrocellulose, they have found,
can be prepared In this way. Attempts
to prepare the acetate have not been so
successful, it being necessary first to iso-
late and purify the cellulose to get a
product suitable for commercial use.
At the same time the Herty Founda-
ton Laboratory of Savannah, Ga, is
conducting studies on the utilization for
cellulose of the Souths billion cords of
pine and hardwoods. The studies have
shown to date that pulps well suited for
continuous rayon fllaments can be made
from young pines by the sulphite process
Growth of less than Is years is used. On
this basis there are approximately 49,
600 900 cords of standing pulpwood avail
able, with yearly increase of 5000, 900
cords. These would produce about 1,60o,-
600 tons of bleached pulp wood The en-
tire world consumption at present is
about 1,000, 900 tons year.
Next in line in suitability are the
Southern hardwoods, chiefly black gum,
red gum and cottonwood. Bleached sui
phite pulps from these woods are inferior
to pine sulphite pulp. The forest re-
sources are enormous. There are about
125,000,000 cords under saw wood size in
the South with an estimated increment
of $4,000 cords year. This is equiva-
lent to 100000 tons of bleached pulp a
year.