SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



pulp, which after a chemical clean-up give sixty pounds 

 of crude tall oil. 



If all the sulfate mills skimmed their black liquors 

 we could have some two hundred million pounds of 

 crude tall oil a year. Before the war, almost none of 

 the mills bothered, though the thrifty Swedish pulp 

 industry had long found this by-product a pleasant 

 source of profit. In the United States, only a couple of 

 most chemically minded mills, notably West Virginia 

 and Champion, both always keen on by-product recov- 

 ery, paid any attention at all to this potential market. 

 The trouble was not to recover it, but to sell it. The 

 war changed this. Industrial users who had turned up 

 their noses at this strange, untried material, became 

 eager buyers. Half a score of converting plants were 

 installed two each in Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and 

 Louisiana, and one each in Mississippi, South Carolina, 

 and Texas and a number of other mills began collect- 

 ing and shipping skimmings to these plants for refining. 

 By the end of the war most of this waste was being 

 salvaged, a total of eighty thousand tons. 



Crude tall oil, that is, the natural mixture of fatty and 

 resinous acids as separated out from the skimmings, is 

 not going to find a steady sale in peacetime. Everybody 

 admits that, but there are two thoughts about how much 

 further the refining process should go. Certainly it must 

 go at least through a chemical clean-up stage to remove 

 impurities, lighten the color, and cut down the odor. 



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