Oil From Pine May Be Made In N.Z.

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31016, 23 March 1966, Page 11

Oil From Pine May Be Made In N.Z.

A valuable oil, at present being imported for use in secondary industry may soon be produced in New Zealand as a by-product of the timber industry as a result of research at the Fats Research Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Wellington. A by-product of the process used in making paper-pulp from radiata pine, the oil was first produced in Sweden early this century. It comprises a mixture of fatty and rosin acids with small quantities of other materials. There has recently been an increasing demand for rosins for which tall (Swedish for pine) oil is a main source. The rosins are needed to manufacture linoleum, oilcloth, soaps, paints and varnishes, and are always in demand. Being a by-product of a permanent industry, tall oil has the further advantage of being in constant and steady supply. It is relatively cheap and prices do not fluctuate as do those of edible oils and gum, the alternative sources of tall oil ingredients. Being a fatty acid, tall oil

iS preferred for soap making because it makes processing simpler. It reacts on contact with alkali to form soaps, and neither boiling nor excess alkali —used in some present methods—is needed to complete the reaction. Tall oil soaps are much more soluble in water, especially at low temperatures, then tallow or coconut oil soaps. Costs have been lowered by substituting tall oil for rosin in hard soaps such as laundry bar, chip, or granulated soaps. It is also

used as a base in many kinds of soap powder. Similarly, liquid soaps made from this oil, when mixed with other fatty acids, dissolve grease and oil better. In the United States about 35 per cent of all the rosin produced from tall oil is used as “size” for glazing paper. Degreasing compounds, lubricants, detergents, disinfec* tants, polishes, printing inks, adhesives and waterproofing agents are among its other uses. The biggest industrial users are linoleum, paint, varnish and soap manufacturers. Paper pulp is manufactured at Kawerau and Kinleith on a large scale, using the sulphate process, from locally-grown pinus radiata, but at neither plant are soaps recovered for conversion to oil. The alkali liquors and tall oil soaps are usually burnt, the only recovered material at present being sodium sulphide. To determine the quality of tall oil that could be produced from New Zealand mills samples have been taken periodically for treatment by the Fats Research Division of the Department of

Scientific and Industrial Research.

New Zealand mills produced 364,000 tons of paper pulp in 1964-65, and it is likely that annual production will at least equal this for some years to come. Assuming the yield of tall oil will be one per cent of the dry weight of pulp produced, the present potential production in New Zealand is about 3640 tons a year, a useful sideline to New Zealand’s timber industry.