PULP, PAPER, AND BY-PRODUCTS 



Should the fatty rosin acids be separated completely, 

 or how much, or at all? 



"Not at all," says one line of reasoning. "Why take 

 out what our best customers will only put back again? 

 In soap, varnish, printing inks, linoleums, and many 

 emulsions, it has long been standard practice to add 

 certain amounts of rosin to the fats and oils used in their 

 manufacture. What we need to do is to produce a fine, 

 light-colored tall oil, containing different standardized 

 percentages of rosin acid so as to meet the exact re- 

 quirements of the various consuming industries." 



The other side counters, "Unless we refine crude tall 

 oil to the point of separating the fatty and rosin acids, 

 we must always sell a cheap product in competition 

 with the lowest-price, off-grade technical oils, plus rosin, 

 which everybody seems to forget has sold as low as two 

 cents a pound. We ought to sell on the basis of our 

 most valuable product, the fatty acids, for those found 

 in tall oil make fine drying oils for paints, and if suffi- 

 ciently purified, they can be hydrogenated into food- 

 stuffs." 



Nobody has yet succeeded in producing this super- 

 refined tall oil commercially, although a lot of people 

 are working on it. Even the big naval stores chemical 

 plants, Hercules and Newport, are interested, for this 

 is along their line and the prize that dangles ahead is 

 tempting. Three-quarters of a million tons of technical 

 oils and fatty acids go into American soap every year; 



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