PULP, PAPER, AND BY-PRODUCTS 



appears actually to improve the compounded rubber, 

 especially synthetic rubber. 



From New England comes word of a use for lignin 

 that would be almost without limit. Robert S. Aries at 

 Yale, who has been poking about the forests and wood- 

 lots hunting chemical opportunities, has announced that 

 lignin increases the fertility of depleted soil twenty per 

 cent by adding organic matter and encouraging the 

 formation of humus. Worn-out farm lands in every sec- 

 tion of the country often suffer more from lack of living 

 organic material than from lack of the elements, potash, 

 phosphorus, and nitrogen. To revivify these "dead soils," 

 as Louis Bromfield calls them, is the crucial step in soil 

 building. If lignin can help, a notable "wealth from 

 waste" triumph will be scored. 



Wood seems such a solid substance, it is hard to be- 

 lieve that a fifth of the pulpwood that goes into the 

 paper mills dissolves away in water and literally goes 

 down the sewer. Yet this is so, for in the chemical treat- 

 ment the so-called wood sugars, twenty per cent of the 

 total, become soluble. Again, the Masonite process dif- 

 fers from paper making, not only in actually putting 

 lignin to work, but also in saving these wood sugars. 

 They are washed out after the material is exploded from 

 the gun, and Masonite could collect a hundred tons 

 daily. Here is a potential source of twelve million 

 pounds of furfural a year, a lot of pounds of a very use- 

 ful chemical at a very low cost. 



165 



