Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 109, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1911 — PULP WOOD FROM WASTE [ARTICLE]

PULP WOOD FROM WASTE

Professor Frankfortor of University of Minnesota Makes Discovery of Importance. St. Paul, Minn.—Prof. George B. Frankforter, dean of the College of Chemistry of the Minnesota State university, has announced the details of a discovery made by him by which, he declares, through the utilisation of waste wood and sawdust the United States will produce one hundred times more pulp wood than was believed possible. “It means,” he says, “that every cord of fir lumber will yield $lO profit on by-products alone, and that the greater part of the 60 per cent, of a tree now wasted will be turned into dollars and cents.” Professor Frankforter predicts that huge plants will be built as the result of his discovery and that the new industry will assume proportions of great magnitude. G A. Smith, Of the C. A.‘Smith Timber company, is interested with Professor Frankforter in the process. So convinced Is he of the enormous commercial value of the discovery that an experimental plant Is now being constructed, and a mammoth plant Is already planned, to be erected in the far west.

Doctor Frankforter has experimented on his processes tor twelve years. The developed process consists in taking small pieces of waste wood or sawdust, laying them on a steel incline over a furnace, and subjecting them to a chemical process of distillation. Carbon disulphide or gasoline is poured over the sawdust, dissolving the turpentine and resin, which pass off as gases into a coil of pipes leading to a tank The process 18 similar to the distillation of sugar. The wood pulp remains, free from pitch and suitable for the manufacture of paper. The present method of distillation leaves the pulp in the form of charcoal