Canadian Foreslri/ Journal, August, WIS 



1823 



run continuously and this gave s])aie 

 clilorine at intervals to be disposed of. 

 In looking for processes Nvhich would 

 take care of this surplus chlorine gas, 

 several by-product industries were 

 started. Chloroform was made by 

 treating acetone with chlorine under 

 certain conditions. Instead of buy- 

 ing acetone, the company finally 

 bought acetate of lime as raw mater- 

 ial and made acetone by destructive 

 distillation. Carbon tetrachloride is 

 closely related to chloroform and was 

 soon another by-product. As the 

 sulphite mill had plenty of sulphur, 

 the manufacture of sulphur chlorides 

 was started. These are the ordinary 

 chemicals used in making acetic 

 anhydride from sodium acetate, and 

 it was a simple step to convert 

 acetate of lime into sodium acetate 

 for treating with sulphur chloride to 

 give acetic anhydride, now so much in 

 demand for manufacture of cellulose 

 acetate for airplane "dope." 



'' Kream Krisp'" 



All this time there was the loss of 

 hydrogen gas from the cells. By 

 bringing the hydrogen and part of 

 the chlorine ga.s together in a com- 

 bustion chamber and lighting a 

 match, the hydrogen and chlorine 

 i)urned one in the other to form 

 hydrochloric acid, and the mixture 

 has now been burning several years, 

 with practically no attention, to 

 form hydrochloric acid, which is one 

 of the commonest and most important 

 acids on the market. The widely 

 advertised and highly nutritious lard 

 substitutes are made by treating 

 refined vegetable oils with hydrogen 

 to form a harder fat of exactly the 

 same composition as the main fat in 

 lard. The company undertook to 

 use up some of its waste hydrogen by 

 combining with peanut oil and the 

 well-known " Kream Krisp'' of the 

 Brown Company is now a standard 

 by-product. Not content to buy 

 prepared peanut oil, the company 

 bought peanuts and made its own 

 oil. ^ 



With water power and sulphur to 

 spare, the electrochemical conversion 

 of coke and sulphur into carbon 



disulphide was added to the list of 

 by-product industries. 



To make grain Alcohol. 



There is now some talk of making 

 grain alcohol (ethyl alcohol) from 

 finely divided saw-mill waste by an 

 improved process of heating the wood 

 under steam pressure with mineral 

 acid to form sugars by the breaking- 

 down action known as "hydrolysis," 

 and then extracting the sugars for 

 fermentation into alcohol. It is 

 claimed that oxalic acid can be made 

 from the woody residue in the digester. 



As a further example of careful 

 attention to details, the company puts 

 all its bark through a hydraulic press 

 for use as fuel. Slabs from the saw- 

 mill are barked in rotating "tumbling 

 barrels" and the clean wood is then 

 chipped for use in making sulphite 

 pulp. Even the edgings are freed 

 from bark by a hand operation of 

 holding against a rotating drum set 

 with knives and this material also 

 goes into chips for the sulphite mill, 

 in the kraft process the spent sul- 

 phate Hcjuor always has to be evapor- 

 ated and burned to recover the 

 alkali, and the company has adopted 

 the Cottrell process of electric percip- 

 itation of fumes from the incinerator 

 to recover some alkali that would 

 otherwise be blown oirt to waste. 



How it came about. 

 All this complication of manu- 

 facture did not develop from the 

 original saw-mill without careful 

 study, technical skill, and financial 

 courage on the part of the men in 

 control of the company. At the 

 same time there is hardly any- 

 thing strictly original with the 

 company in the whole Ust of by- 

 products. What was necessary 

 was an intelligent knowledge of 

 the possibilities and painstaking 

 experimental work to adapt eafch 

 desired process to the company's 

 own conditions. This has required 

 first-class technical men with im- 

 agination and patience, as well as 

 libera) advances of money by the 

 company for experimental and 

 development work. It is said that 

 the number of dollars now spent 

 by the company each year on re- 



