Ex-Nuisance

When a carload of logs goes through a pulp mill, half of it (the fiber) comes out as pulp (for paper). The rest comes out as a waste sulphite liquor,* a sirupy fluid. To U. S. paper mills this waste was as much a nuisance as used razor blades to ordinary citizens. Poured into rivers at the rate of 3,000,000 tons a year, it absorbed the free oxygen in the water, impairing fishing and polluting streams.

Sportsmen and municipal officials set up such a howl that papermaking States have threatened to crack down on the dumping. Some foresighted paper-mill operators had hired chemists to see whether the waste liquor could be turned to profit. One of the leaders in that move was cagey Marathon Paper Mills Co. (food containers, waxed-paper wrappers). To its plant at Rothschild, Wis. twelve years ago it summoned lanky, sensitive Guy Howard, free-lance consulting chemist, and gave him a staff of researchers. Since then it has put $1,500,000 into its chemical division.

From sulphite liquor, in the course of a decade, Chemist Howard and his helpers drew a reddish-brown goo: lignin. From lignin they extracted vanillin (synthetic vanilla), now used for flavoring by many big sweets and ice cream manufacturers; Maratan, a chemical for tanning hides; T. D. A., a chemical for improving the quality of cement. Faster than dizzy Marathon officials could find markets for them, Guy Howard turned out new byproducts.

Last week he could sit back and smile as sheets of lignin plastic, made from the residue after vanillin had been extracted, rolled off the machines. Marathon officials described it as:

> The cheapest plastic material ever made, priced at 5-c- a pound in tonnage quantities (compared with 15-c- to 50-c- a pound for most other plastics now in use).

> Pound for pound as strong as steel, and capable of being molded into any shape.

> Suitable for parts and bodies of automobiles, airplane fuselages, refrigerators. (Ford and Chrysler are looking it over; General Electric is experimenting.)

Marathon is now producing the new lignin plastic at the rate of 25 tons a day, has raw materials on hand for a top production of 400 tons daily. Last year the company's net sales were $11,109,000. Last week its officials announced a $1,500,000 expansion program. But Chemist Howard was still scouting ahead. His goal: to establish his new chemical talk-of-the-town as the most important addition to the world's store of raw materials since coal tar and cellulose.

*Mills that manufacture brown paper obtain a black liquor from which chemicals can be recovered. Mills (like Marathon) that manufacture fine paper discard sulphite liquor.

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