43, Chancery Lane, W.C.2; P. B. Symonds, The Mount, Symonds Yat, Ross-on-Wye; J. E. Shaw, Middle Pavement, Nottingham; C. Middleweek, Emerson Lodge, Sherwood, Nottingham. Qualification of Directors: £5500. Remuneration of Directors: To be voted by Company. WALESWOOD COKING COMPANY, LIMITED.(175295)-Registered 20th June, 1921. Wales wood Colleries, Near Sheffield. To acquire and take over as a going concern the business of Manufacturers of Coke and Residuals or by-products of Coal heretofore carried on by Skinner & Holford, Limited. Nominal Capital: £100,000 in 100,000 Shares of 1 each. Directors: J. H. Ashton, Newlands, Todwick, Near Sheffield; A. E. Bond, Lloyds Bank Chambers, New Street, Birmingham; A. Thompson, Throapham House, Throapham, Near Rotherham; S. C. Skinner, Throapham Manor, near Rotherham. Qualification of Directors: 1 Share. Remuneration of Directors: To be voted by Company. New Patents. THIS List is specially compiled for the Chemical News by Messrs. NOTICES. July 1, 1921 EDITORIAL.-All Literary communications and Books, Chemical Apparatus, &c., for review or notice to be addressed to the EDITOR. SUBSCRIPTIONS, £1 12s. per annum, payable in advance, should be addressed to the MANAGER. BACK NUMBERS and VOLUMES can be purchased on application to he MANAGER. THE CHEMICAL NEWS, 97, SHOE LANE, LONDON, E.C 4. ADVERTISEMENTS. All communications for this Department should be ad dressed to T. G. SCOTT & SON, 63, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON, E C.4. THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER Rayner & Co, Registered Patent Agents, of 5, Chancery Lane, THE Council is about to proceed to the London, W.C.2., from whom all information relating to Patents, Trade Marks and Designs can be obtained gratuitously. Latest Patent Applications. 16320-Chambers, E. V.-Treating waste, etc., liquors containing ferrous chloride. June 14. 16526-Maeder, H.-Process for preparation of tropinone-monocarboxylic acid esters. June 15. 16743-Mau, W.-Manufacture of concentrated hydrogen peroxide solution. June 17. 16248-Toniolo, C.-Drying or eliminating water vapours from nitric or nitrous acid vapours from gases derived from oxidized ammonia. June 13. 16265-Volart y Jubany, R.-Manufacture of hydrochloric acid. June 13. 16368-Durand & Huguenin Akt-Ges.-Manufacture of halogen derivatives of basic acridine dye-stuffs. June 18. Specifications published this Week. 164374-Dreyfus, H.-Manufacture of cellulose derivatives. 164384-Dreyfus, H.-Manufacture of products having a basis of cellulose derivatives. 137529-Bielouss, E.-Process for the production of aminocompounds from trinitrotoluol. 164627-Unione Italiana fra Consumatorie Fabricani Di Concumie Prodotti Chemical & Sonneck, A.-Manufacture of sulphuric acid. Abstract Published this Week. Catalytic Hydrogenation of Fats, etc.-Mr. E. R. Bolton of Milner Street, London has obtained a Patent No. 162370 for an improved treatment of fats, etc., in which the catalyst for use in the hydrogenation of fats or oils consists of nickel wool which has been activated by the action of an acid such as nitric acid upon its surface, followed by conversion of the layer of nickel salt to oxide and reduction in hydrogen The reaction chamber is packed with the activated nickel wool and the oil and hydrogen passed through in counter-current. After use the catalyst is regenerated by first removing nickel soaps by washing with the hot oil, then removing the oil by solvents and finally heating in hydrogen. According to the provisional Specification, the nickel wool may be activated by alternate oxidation and reduction, the catalyst may be electrically heated, aud a number of reaction vessels may be arranged in series. APPOINTMENT of a SENIOR LECTURER or LECTURER, according to qualifications, in PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY, who would be expected to enter on his duties on September 29th, 1921. Commencing stipend £400 and £350 per annum respectively. Further particulars may be obtained from the Internal Registrar. Applications, giving three references, should be sent to the Internal Registrar not later than July 18th. Testimonials (one copy of each, which need not be printed) may be submitted. Messrs. Rayner & Co., will obtain printed copies of the PATENTS, TRADE MARKS. published specifications and will forward on post free for the official price of 1/- each. Handbook and advice free-B. T. KING, British and U. S. Regd. Patent Attorney, 146a, Queen Victoria St., London. 35 years reference Pioneer Movement for Establishing a British Bureau of Standards BRITISH CHEMICAL STANDARDS STEELS (Plain Carbon and Alloy) AND CAST IRON. Analytically standardised by, and issued under the auspices of Co-operating Chemists representing different districts and sections of industry With every portion of standard turnings a Certificate is issued showing the type of method used by each analyst, his results, and the average of all New Carbon Steels: "M", C. 0.23% & Si 005 %; & "01", C. 0.33% (complete analysis) just issued Already a knowledged and used by over 300 W rks and Independent Analysts at home and abroad. Can be obtained of leading Chemical Dealers, or at Headquarters, 3, Wilson Street, Middlesbrough. No. 10.-A new unwashed grade; specially thin and adapted to retain finest precipitate s Nos. 1-5-Ordinary Grades for qualitative work. Nos. 30-31-Single Acid Washed-of close texture-fast and medium filters. Nos. 40-44-Double Acid Washed-" Ashless" - Very accurate. FOLDED FILTERS. BLACK FILTERS. FILTER CONES, &c., &c. SOLE MANUFACTURERS: W. & R. BALSTON, LTD., MEDWAY MILL, MAIDSTONE, KENT. FIND OUT ALL ABOUT OUR COMPLETE RANGE FROM OUR REVISED BOOKLET AND FRICE LIST In case of difficulty in obtaining Free Samples, we the Sole Mill Representatives - SULPHATE of COPPER. Powder or Crystals. 'MAPLE" BRAND. Guaranteed 98-99% Purity. NICKEL SALTS (FOR NICKEL PLATING, Etc.) Guaranteed 99-100% Purity. NICKEL ANODES. NICKEL SHEET and STRIP. NICKEL ROD and WIRE. Guaranteed 99-100% Purity. MOND NIEL ANALYSIS: 99.8% NI. The MOND NICKEL Co., Ltd. 39, VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, S.W.1. NEWS IT is a commonplace observation now that the question of the world's paper supply has arrived at an acute stage. We see it referred to in more or less lachrymose tones in almost every newspaper we take up. Our pockets test it daily in handing out twopences instead of pennies; the fivepenny five-quire packet, with twopence for twenty-five envelopes, and the halfpenny newspaper have disappeared; and we are studying economy in a direction we never thought of before. In 1913, the world's consumption of paper was estimated at ten million tons annually, increasing at the rate of 25 per cent every ten years. It must be now nearly twelve millions, or would be if the supplies were available. Of this about 80 per cent is produced from wood-coniferous wood, and preferably spruce. In 1913, although there had been a slow but gradual appreciation of values during the previous ten years, it was still possible to deliver chemically-prepared pulp in this country at £9 to £10, and mechanicallyprepared, or ground wood-pulp, at £5 10s. to £6 per dry ton, and newsprint paper could be produced for a penny per pound. Now values are four to five times these figures. The causes stated in order of their importance from lesser to greater are these: (a) The slow but gradual rise of values in pulp and all that it depends upon, dating from the period of lowest prices, about fifteen years ago. During the war this was, by reason of controls, restrictions, and reduced consumption more less in suspense, but has now fallen on the industry with five years' cumulative effect. or (b) The universal appreciation in value of timber for constructional purposes. The sawmill is now a better market than the pulp factory. (c) Effects of the war in permanently increased costs for labour, freights, fuel, and machinery, and equipment. (d) The total cessation of six years past of manufacturing expansion. (e) The demand for wood has outrun the supply. The trees will not grow as fast as they are cut. The last of these is the root cause of the trouble and is a constantly increasing menace. It does not necessarily imply that he world's stock of timber has been seriously depleted, but it does mean that forests most favourably situated for exploitation—the areas which produced the penny per pound newsprint-have been largely reduced in productiveness and in many instances destroyed for ever. Expansion in wood-pulp production must seek its supplies at greater distance and increased cost. Notwithstanding this, the new values of pulp, making all allowances for temporary inflation, render such expansion abundantly justified. How much greater, therefore, is *From Journal of The Royal Society of Arts, June 24, 1921. (By permission). the justification for the introduction of a material which is one of Nature's waste products, which reproduces itself naturally and rapidly, for which no sawmill competes, and which offers itself at Nature's valuation, which is next door to nothing. consumers. So we ask ourselves the question, what can India do to fill the gap which has been created? The answer is a great deal, though not so much, perhaps, as is sometimes assumed. When the threatened shortage of paper supplies began to be an eminent agitated, some fifteen years ago, scientist issued what was intended to be a reassuring statement to the effect that "a paper famine was unthinkable, because paper could be made from any vegetable substance, and the world teemed with that." The dictum was seized upon by the Press and circulated round the world, and, no doubt, brought comfort to many anxious But like many other assertions of many other eminent scientists, it was considered as cold fact, perfectly true, and at the same time, considered as a practical contribution to a difficult problem, perfectly misleading and fallacious. Paper can be made from any vegetable substance, but money cannot, and the paper-maker has a quite natural reluctance to make paper unless he can transform it into bank notes. But our eminent scientist's utterance gave rise to a whole crop of wild-cat proposals to make paper from everything, anything, and sometimes bordering on nothing. Nature, however, is not so fantastically generous as that. He whom she would favour must delve into her secrets slowly, deeply, carefully; hoping all things, proving all things, until finally he can hold fast to that which is good. This has been in essence the principle upon which the investigations of the Indian Forest Research Institute, to which I am about briefly to allude, We have thought it more important in the early stages of our proceedings to save people's money than to teach them how to make it, for nothing is more fatal to a promising industry than a disastrous failure at its start. At the same time, while paying considerable attention to the how-not-to-do-it programme, and weeding out the "duds," we have met with encouraging success on the positive side. Our eminent scientist was an all-in, whole hog, hundred per cent We have knocked ninety-five off that, but remain quite pleased with the five which have survived. The truth is that out of the hundreds of thousands of species available, a large number have to be rejected because of the cost of isolating their cellulose, a further large number because the cellulose is no good when you have got it, not to mention others which grow in economically inaccessible situations or are too valuable for other purposes. have been carried on. man. The net result is that so far we have found only two small groups, both belonging to the Gramineæ, which are economically sound as regards the quantity and quality of their cellulose, and the manufactring conditions under which they can be exploited. These are bamboos and a few Savannah grasses. But, though few in number, in the aggregate they mean something considerable. It is, I think, a modest estimate to say that from bamboo, taking only that which is available under possible manufacturing conditions, Burma, Bengal, and South-West India could produce ten million tons of pulp per annum, and Assam, from Savannah grasses, three million. India could, therefore, produce pulp for the whole world. Consider also the growth conditions under which this is obtainable. To grow a spruce or fir tree of pulpwood size takes from 40 to 60 years, with the result that a factory which may at its start have its supplies at its back door finds these year by year receding into the distance with constantly increasing transport costs. Bamboos and grasses come to maturity as yearly or eighteen monthly growths, and all you have to be careful of is not to reduce the reproductive vigour of the plant by too frequent cropping. With bamboo this may mean a three to five year rotation of cropping, and with grasses two to three years. We must, therefore, have a sufficient area to exploit to allow of these rest periods, but that only means that for a ten-thousand-ton pulp output per annum, with average figures for yield and rotation, a 20,000-acre reserve will keep a factory going in perpetuance-a vastly different condition of affairs from those governing a wood-pulp installation which lives on its capital from the start or must adopt a reafforesting policy, which reacts badly upon costs. Bamboo for paper-making is no new suggestion. In the seventies the late Thomas Routledge, well known as the successful pioneer of esparto grass, experimented with it, obtaining encouraging results as far as quality and suitability were concerned, but failing on the economic side, partly because of its resistance to bleaching, but chiefly because just at that moment wood-pulp came in with a rush and more than filled the demand. In 1905 Mr. Sindall, at the instance of the Government of India, carried out an extensive investigation in Burma, with results considerably more encouraging than those of Routledge, though still somewhat disappointing on the bleaching side, and, at that date, cheap wood-pulp still controlled the market. In 1909 the Government of India, at the instance of Sir John Miller and Sir Robert Carlyle, who succeeded him as Member of Council for Revenue and Agriculture, deemed the time had arrived for a thorough enquiry into the whole subject, and handed it over to the officers of the Forest Research Institute, then under the Presidency of Mr. R. S. Pearson, conducting the Forestry side of it. The chemical branch was begun at the Allahabad Exhibition of 1910, under the Presidency of Sir John Hewett, then Lieut.Governor of the United Provinces, and the directorship of Mr. P. H. Clutterbuck, Conservator of Forests, and afterwards continued at the Forest Research Institute. Hitherto the Institute's laboratory work has been supplemented by tests at paper mills, by the courtesy of their owners, but Government has new ordered in Scotland a complete pulp and paper-making plant on a sufficient scale to permit of factory methods being used. This is to be erected at the Institute, and will immensely reinforce its usefulness. would like in passing to call attention to Government's policy in thus carrying out the enquiries initiated by Sir John Miller, Sir Robert Carlyle, and Sir John Hewett, as an evidence of its keen interest in the industrial development of the country. I The chemical branch of the enquiry was begun under conditions considerably more favourable than those with which Routledge and Sindall had to work. The uncertainties on the forestry side had been largely cleared up by Mr. Pearson's work, so there was no longer the risk of wasting time and effort on species and areas which he had shown to be of doubtful value. Considerable improvements had been arrived at in digestion methods, and particularly in the recovery and reuse of soda from the waste liquors, largely reducing the cost of chemical treatment. In Routledge's time a recovery of 40 per cent was regarded as good; now from 80 to 90 per cent is not unusual. Most important of all, market values of wood-pulp were no longer on the down grade, and the call for a new source of supply was becoming insistent. The problems to be faced were mainly those concerned with the cost of bleaching. It was evident that the dark brown colour of the unbleached pulp hitherto produced was not its natural and unadulterated colour, which in carefully prepared samples is a light grey, faintly tinted with brown. The dark brown was a degradation result produced by the re-absorption by the Cellulose-which, as evidenced by its use in blotting paper, is one of the most absorbent substances known-of some of the complexes produced by the combination of soda with the solubles in the raw material. The first step in the enquiry, therefore, resolved itself into the isolation and separate examination of these. This resulted in the separation of the plant constituents into a series of groups, based on their degrees of solubility. Each of these groups is a complex one, exhibiting the group substance in several forms and types, all of which are of interest to the organic chemist, and upon which much valuable work has been done by Cross and Bevan and others-in fact, it is upon the foundations laid by Cross and Bevan that our work has been builtbut what interests the pulp manufacturer chiefly is the problem of getting into solution the noncellulose constituents of his raw material. Proceeding on these lines, it was found possible to separate the plant constituents into four groups having marked and striking differences of solubility. In order of solubility beginning with the least resistant they are: GROUP I.-Starch and its secondary and transformation products-all soluble in boiling water. GROUP II.-Pectose soluble in one to two per cent caustic soda solution at boiling temperature. GROUP III-Lignin soluble in four per cent caustic soda solution at temperatures over 130° C. GROUP IV. Cellulose, the insoluble residue. An average analysis of bamboo on these lines will give results in round figures as follows:Starch group 12 Pectose Lignin Cellulose Per cent. 20 15 53 100 There is also a trifling amount of wax and silica in the cuticle which goes into solution with the Pectose group. The characteristics of the three soluble groups in their behaviour with soda are as follows:Starch in its primary form gives a clear colourless solution, but its quantity present in a total group content of 12 per cent does not exceed a sixth. The other 10 per cent of secondary starches form a dark brown nearly black solution of great pulp staining power. The pectoses yield a dark brown staining solution which is gelatinous, and therefore powerfully resistant to removal by washing prior to bleaching the pulp. The lignins give |