64 BULLETIN 150, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Table XIV. — Yield to be expected from 1,000 tons of Nereocystis. 
Material. 
Leaf. 
Stem. 
Total. 
Remarks. 
Wet kelp 
Tom. 
775 
71 
12 
1.54 
Tons. 
225 
16 
4 
.17 
Tons. 
1,000 
86 
16 
1.7 
Counting 3£ times as much leaf as stem. 
Leaves average 9.2 per cent dry; stems, 7.2 per cent. 
Leaves, 17.05 per cent K 2 0; stems, 26.45 per cent K 2 0. 
Leaves, 2.16 per cent N; stems, 1.09 per cent N. 
Kob 
N 
A COMBINED FISH SCRAP AND KELP FERTILIZER PLANT. 
One of the objections to the idea of a central rendering station for 
the treatment of cannery waste is the great length of time when 
the plant and its equipment lies idle. To overcome in part this 
objection it has been proposed that the fish-rendering plant, at times 
when fish waste is not available, be applied to the preparation of 
kelp fertilizer. More accurately, the suggestion is that the render- 
ing of fish waste be resorted to as an operation auxiliary to the 
treatment of kelp. But as the rendering of fish waste requires more 
specialized apparatus than the drying of kelp, it appears more 
plausible to regard the treatment of kelp as subsidiary to the former. 
With a plant fully equipped for the large-scale rendering of fish 
waste, all the equipment necessary for treating kelp, with the ex- 
ception of a kelp harvester, has been supplied. Scows and tugs 
designed for the collection of cannery waste can be applied to the 
harvesting of kelp. The unloading elevators, storage bins, and con- 
veyors within the plant are entirely adaptable to chopped kelp. 
Since the kelp is not to be cooked or pressed, the conveyors should 
be arranged with a view to the transference of the material directly 
from storage bin to drier. And the drier, of whatever form, prob- 
ably would be found quite suitable for drying kelp. 
Assuming the canning season, for example, in the Puget Sound 
region to be confined to the months of July and August, the equip- 
ment of the rendering station can be applied to the treatment of 
kelp during the months of September, October, and probably Novem- 
ber, thus more than doubling the activity of the plant. The capacity 
of the drier, for the plant proposed in the foregoing paragraphs, 
in actual practice is about 50 tons per day, which is equivalent 
to about 500 tons of wet kelp. Furthermore, even during the can- 
ning season, when the amount of fish waste available is not suffi- 
cient to keep the plant running at full capacity, kelp may be har- 
vested and dried as a supplementary operation. 
The following estimates may serve to convey some idea of the cost 
and profits to be expected from the supplementary operations on 
kelp. Since the drier has a capacity of 50 tons of dry kelp, the 
capacity of the plant is limited to the equivalent weight of green 
kelp, which, on the basis of 10 per cent solids in the green, is 500 
