November, 1910 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



Xlll 



PAPER FROM GRAPE VINE STEMS 

 r)V Dr. Robert Grimshaw. 



ALTHOUGH the grape industry is 

 not one of the principal sources of 

 wealth of America as it is in Ger- 

 many and France, still the possibility of 

 using waste material such as grape-vine 

 stems should not be without interest in the 

 States ; and this possibility is ofifered by an 

 invention that is giving the French and 

 Germans great pleasure, especially as at the 

 present time the wine industry is languish- 

 ing in both countries. 



Mons. Chaptal, professor of general and 

 applied chemistry in the agricultural school 

 at ]Montpelier, has been making extensive 

 experiments concerning the possibility of 

 making paper out of vine-stems. This is 

 all the more welcome, as the supply of 

 raw material for paper-making is getting 

 scarcer every year. 



From the botanical point of view, the 

 vine differs from ordinary tree branches 

 only in a few unimportant details. The 

 amount of cellulose in the two is about the 

 same. For the manufacture of paper any 

 substance can be employed which may be 

 changed partly or wholly into fibers and 

 form cellulose, and the fibers of which are 

 sufficient. Concerning his experiments with 

 the vine. Chaptal says he cut the dried stems 

 into pieces of convenient length and treated 

 them with hot diluted aqua regia (nitro- 

 muriatic acid). The resulting product he 

 triturated slightly with water and passed it 

 through a sieve, obtaining a brown pulp 

 composed of spindle-shaped fibers of cellu- 

 lose of different but sufficient lengths. 

 Treating the stems with alkalies gave about 

 the same results. According to these ex- 

 periments there can be obtained from dried 

 stems, by suitable reduction in size, a prod- 

 uct which answers all the requirements of a 

 good paper pulp. 



As regards the industrial and economic 

 side of the question. La Nature gives some 

 data concerning the comparative values of 

 the different raw materials in France. The 

 wood employed for paper-making, mostly fir, 

 birch, aspen and sycamore (platana), costs 

 Fr. 7.00 per cubic meter, or Fr. 2.00 per 100 

 kilogrammes. Assuming that the vine stems 

 yield 50 per cent as much paper pulp, in 

 proportion, as the wood, their worth would 

 be at least Fr. 1.00 per 100 kilogrammes, 

 which would correspond to Fr. 15 per hec- 

 tare of vineyard. 



The cost of manufacture would probably 

 be higher than in the case of wood, as there 

 would be more raw material required for 

 an equal weight of pulp. As against this, 

 the treatment of the vine-stems seems to 

 be attended with less difficulty, and there- 

 fore to be more economical than that of 

 wood : so that the total cost of manufacture 

 would be in the two instances about the 

 same, and the vine-stems should bring Fr. 

 1.00 per 100 kilogrammes. It would not, 

 however, pay to transport them far, by 

 reason of their low value in comparison to 

 their bulk ; so that the pulp must be made in 

 the immediate neighborhood of the vine- 

 yards. 



The manufacture of the pulp into paper 

 would be about the same as in the case of 

 wood pulp ; but according to Chaptal's ex- 

 periments the treatment with alkalies gives 

 the best results. The ?jleaching of the pul]) 

 is best eflPected by chlorine. 



The double advantage of the discovery 

 or investigation- — namely, the utilization of 

 the vine-stems and the finding of a substi- 

 tute for the rapidly diminishing supply of 

 rags and other paper-making material — 

 should make this subject of general interest. 



'■/^^ 



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