UTILISING SAWDUST.

Colonist, Volume LV, Issue 13736, 30 May 1913, Page 3

UTILISING SAWDUST.

The traveller on the North Island Main Trunk lino passes at irregular intervals great mountains of sawdust, the remains of a vast forest. Tho sawmill has been at work, and after an area lias 'been cleared has gone further into the bush-, leaving tho sawdust hills behind it. How to utilise this waste is a problem that has puzzled many people, but it seems to have been solved successfully in tlio United States, where- a company is converting sawdust into wood for fuel by moans of a simple machine. Tho material is compressed by plungers in stool cylinders three inches in diameter, and a pres.suro of thirty tons forces the particles together so that no tar or oil is needed to make a solid mass. The machine turns out daily five tons of fuel, which soils readily at 37s 8d a ton, representing an average net profit of 18s 6d a ton from a material that used to bo regarded as useless. There may be money in the sawdust mountains in tho North Island after all.