Word: lignin
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...synthetic rubber supplies may be stretched from two to five times by generous admixture of lignin, a gummy byproduct of the paper industry...
...plastics supplies can probably be doubled by adding lignin-and though plastics have been tiresomely fanfared as coming wartime substitutes for metals in civilian goods, engineers last week confessed that plastics are as scarce as metals, will go almost exclusively into armaments...
...last 30 days, use of lignin-itself a plastic as well as a plastic "extender"-has increased fourfold in making airplane pattern plates...
This is the latest chapter in the utilization of lignin-the greatest industrial-waste on earth. In time, chemists believe, it will spawn as many useful derivatives as coal tar and become the basis of a great chemical industry. But so far, in spite of 40 years of head-scratching and an increasing number of derivatives, chemists have found uses for less than .05% of the 3,000,000 tons of lignin available each year in the U.S. and Canada. Yet lignin production goes merrily on, for it must be removed from wood pulp before the pulp is made into...
...Lignin is a dark, resinous substance lying like mortar among the cellulose-walled cells of all plants. It makes wood woody, constitutes about 25% (by weight) of the coniferous trees from which most paper is made. From the vats of U.S. mills every day are drained some 12,000,000 gallons of lignin waste. Papermen find it harder to get rid of than old razor blades. It is often poured into streams-a practice now forbidden in some States because the lignin absorbs free oxygen from the water, asphyxiates fish. Where stream pollution is forbidden, lignin wastes are now bothersomely...