New Way Of Preventing Spontaneous Wool‘s Fires

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28370, 31 August 1957, Page 14

New Way Of Preventing Spontaneous Wool‘s Fires

Probably all spontaneous wool fires were attributable to oxidation of dangerous pie wools, and a method of yielding wool free from the risks of spontaneous ignition had been found, said Mr I. K. Walker, of the Dominion Laboratory, yesterday. Mr Walker was speaking at the annual conference of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry and the New Zealand section of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. The wool trade bad a long history of fires caused by spontaneous ignition, and as a result of many disastrous ship fires a Royal commission was appointed in 1906, Mr Walker said. The commission decided that the blame was with the slaughter-house wools and warned against, the baling of. wet wool. This theory had been widely held up to the present time. In 1949, the Overseas Shipowners’ Allotment Committee requested the Dominion Laboratory to investigate the problem. The laboratory investigated possible mechanisms causing heating of wool, and in a series of tests with commercial wool samples temperature rises were found to range from zero to complete com‘bustion. said Mr Walker.

The samples with _ the high temperatures were all 'pie wools, although not all the pie wools reacted that way. said Mr Walker.

Pie wool was a form of freezing works woo) made by\rotting process and it comprised about. 1| per cent, of New Zealand’s total wool clip. 1 Some pie wools with high fat content caught alighi in 11 minutes when allowed Ho react with pure oxygen, said Mr Walker. From the evidence it was concluded that this the cause of most spontaneous wool fires. * Mr Walker said the present solution was to have all the dangerous grades of wool segregated for shipment. However, a new process had been devised to strip wool mechanically at- the freezing works, and it had been found to yield wool free from the risks of spontaneous ignition. There was hope that the pie process would be virtually eliminatedXfrom the New Zealand wool industry, said Mr Walker.