GREASE FROM WOOL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21604, 5 January 1945, Page 4

GREASE FROM WOOL

OBTAINED FROM WASTE The British wool industry has produced the most effective lubricant used by the United Nations out of waste from a wool cleansing process. This new wool grease, reports the Yorkshire Post, gives better protection against .rust than any other substance except refined wool fat (lanolin, which cannot be produced in sufficient quantities to cover the huge demand). Extremes of humidity through which aircraft have to fly, for example .raised difficult problems of protection against rust, which could only be solved by the use of some lubricant from wool grease. Wool research scientists in Yorkshire, the centre of Britain’s great wool im dustry. therefore devised a process for extracting wool grease from waste suds after scouring, and a thin film of this substance provides complete protection for all exposed metal parts of aircraft. This grease has also enabled armaments such as fieldguns to be maintained in perfect efficiency in humid tropical battle-zoi, es, such as New Guinea and Burma. Its innumerable uses include paint for camouflage, a new type of dubbin, and axle grease for railways. This new Brtish development, apart from the valuable service it has rendered the United Nations’ war effort, ha.' created a new by-product which raises the potential value of wool m peace-time economy.