BUTTER FROM COAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 August 1946, Page 5

BUTTER FROM COAL

GERMAN FACTORY IN BRITISH ZONE BERLIN, August 7. A factory which makes butter from coal at less than the price of the natural product is one of the prizes discovered in the British zone of Germany, says the correspondent of the Associated Press. A British official said that it was excellent butter, and he doubted whether anyone would guess that it was synthetic. The factory had not made any butter since the end of the war, but the management hoped to resume in September. The butter is kept without refrigeration. i The correspondent says -/that the process is as follows: coal is made into coke, the coke into gas, the gas into paraffin. Eighty tons of fatty acid is drawn from 100 tons of paraffin by blower methods, and the fats are further separated by distillation in a high vacuum. Some of the fats are edible and some are not. Twenty per cent, water is added to the edible fats, also a carrot extract for vitamins and for colouring, and diacetyl for smell. The mixture is whipped up in a machine, and it comes out like sausages. Most of the unedible fats are made into soap and the residue into a basic product for plastics.