Value of Tung Oil

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 3

Value of Tung Oil

In view of the interesting attempt to develop the growing of the tung oil tree in the Far North for commercial purposes we extract the following from a lengthy article in the “N.Z. Financial Times,” for October 10th.

The “oil” itself is the product of crushing the fruit or nuts of the tung oil tree (Aleurites Fordii). The pure oil is clear and clean smelling, something akin to salad oil, but it has wonderful properties which make it essential and indeed indispensable to modern industry.

This “oil” when heated, unlike most oils —which get thinner as the heat increases—thickens with the increase of heat until at 250 degrees C. it turns into an insoluble substance which is not only water and weather proof but is also an insulator and is acid proof. It is these features which make it so extremely valuable.

This is the electrical age and electricity has an implacable enemy, acid, in varying forms find intensity. The use of tung oil in various forms and compounds has been found the most effective safeguard that modern science can devise to counteract the deleterious effects of acid as opposed to electricity or electrical operations and appliances. It should therefore occasion no surprise that this modern

and rapidly enlarging electrical industry is becoming more and more dependent on tung oil for its insulating compounds. One electrical firm alone uses.one and a half million pounds of tung oil annually for such requirements. The value of tung oil in this particular industry is well illustrated by the experiences of the local Post and Telegraph Department. Ever since stretching their wires across the Tikitere sulphur area at Rotorua they have been continually renewing them and the Department could find nothing to satisfactorily protect them from corrosion until they adopted a tung oil product known as Lionoil. Since being treated with this oil the continual replacements of telephone, telegraph wires and cables in this district have been completely stopped. As all New Zealanders are aware, there is no other corrosive so severe as the acid sulphur fumes of the thermal regions and this one example is more than sufficient to bring home to readers just how the action of acids affects this industry and the value of this wonderful oil to the electrical industries of the world.

Commercial aviation owes its possibility to tung oil! This is not a wild statement, but a fact. Duraluminium (the alloy from which the structural components of airplanes and airships are made) is so vulnerable to attack from weather and the changing temperatures at which the machines fly and land, that it will not last three months without adequate protection. Science has been unable to find a more suitable protection than certain tung oil compounds.