CHEMISTRY’S OBJECTIVES

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 13 September 1930, Page 13

CHEMISTRY’S OBJECTIVES

SUBSTITUTE FOR PETROL-.

Asked what he thought were the greatest immediate benefits whicn chemistry was; .likely to confer on the world, Professor Herbert R. Moody, a director of the College of Chemistry, New York, in an interview in London recently, said: “1 should place first a cheap and abundant substitute for petrol. It lias been done in the laboratory and I believe it is coming in industry. Hydrocarbons can be made by getting hydrogen from water and) carbons from coal or wood and a cheaper an.d more abundant fuel than petrol will be produced. I saw them working on the problem, in Milan.

“Next would be obtaining cellulose from chemical processes instead of from trees. We can already make sugar synthetically and an American lias turned sugar into cellulose, so the synthetic production of cellulose cannot be far off. We shall then have chemical sources for clothing and paper and numerous other articles of daily- importance.”