EXTRACTING PETROL FROM CORN

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5292, 3 January 1947, Page 2

EXTRACTING PETROL FROM CORN

AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS ARE FAR ADVANUED; The production of synthetic liquid motor fuels from corncobs and other farm wastes has anoved a step forward with the opening of a new plant at the United States Department of A^Ticulturje's n4|rthern regional research laboratory. Dr. L. 3. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Agricultural and Industrial Ohemistry, announced that operations designed to process enough material for a daily qutput of 500 gallons had been started in the new unit. The function of the newly constructed building is to produce fermentable sugars from which liquid fuels can be obtained. The farm leftovers pass /through a series of coils, vats, and machines in what is known as a "saccharification process." ' In the case of corncobs, it goes like this : The cobs are crushed and fed into a long cylinder, where the particles are forced through an acid bath to extract the sugars. This yields a 15 per eent. sugar solution. The particles then are dried, ground put through an acid spray, a screw press, a high speed mixer, a steamheated coil, and a filter. The result is a clear solution containing about 10 per cent. glucose sugar. The solution then go to a pilot plant to be fermented to alcohol, butanol, and acetone. The research is aimed at ascertaining bow much of this liquid fuel material can be derived from tbe various kinds of agricultural surpluses, eomputing the costs of such processes, and determining the feasibility of production on a commercial scale.