DESTRUCTIVE DISTILLATION PRODUCTS OF WOOD, IN- 

 CLUDING THEIR NATURE AND USES AND OTHER 

 CHEMICAL METHODS OF MANUFACTURE. 





INTRODUCTION. 



Each year there are millions of cords of wood wasted in the forest 

 and on the farm. This wood, because of its shape, size, or quality, 

 is not suitable for the numerous mechanical uses for which wood is 

 employed, and information regarding other means of disposing of 

 this waste is of general interest. Aside from tanning and paper 

 making, which are chemical industries that have been established for 

 hundreds of years, there are other industrial uses, of more recent 

 origin, which are of agricultural importance because they offer a 

 means of utilizing these wastes of the sawmill and the forest. The 

 more important of these are destructive distillation, recovery of tur- 

 pentine, rosin, and paper pulp, preparation of alcohols, and manu- 

 facture of acids. The growth of some of these industries has been 

 rapid in recent years, and is not due alone to the demand for a 

 method of utilizing the waste woods of lumbering operations, such as 

 tops, sawdust, slabs, and timber too small to be profitably handled 

 for lumber, but also to a steadily increasing demand for wood alcohol, 

 acetates, acetone, turpentine, charcoal, etc., in other industries. In 

 the past the demand for these products has been sufficient to encour- 

 age the steady growth of the industries engaged in their production, 

 and the values of the products have been -well maintained, except in 

 so far as the passage of the law permitting the tax-free use of denatured 

 alcohol has affected the price of wood alcohol. 



STATISTICS OF WOOD DISTILLATION. 



Of the various processes employed for manufacturing chemical 

 compounds from wood, that of destructive distillation is probably 

 at present the most important. The industry is an old one, and is 

 quite well developed in Germany, Russia, Norway, and Sweden, and 

 less extensively in France and England. 



[Cir. 36] 



(7) 



