COOPERATION OF THE UNIVERSITY WITH INDUSTRY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO PULP AND PAPER* H. K. BENSON, UNIVERSITY OR WASHINGTON, SEATTLE,WASAINGTON
The dependence of industry upon research is quite generally admitted. According to a recent estimate American industry makes an annual expenditure of $200,000,000 for research in the laboratories of the United States. While a large part of this expenditure is made in the laboratories of the industrial plants themselves, the dependence of the industries upon the research of the higher educational institutions is not to be ignored. Not long ago a speaker discussed the progress of medicine. He pointed out that while improvements in the technic of surgery might be made and modifications of anesthesia were constantly attempted, the profession of medicine was really waiting for chemistry to push out the borders of our knowledge concerning the human body. The nature of the chemical compounds in the body fluids, the mechanism of the reactions within these fluids, the identification of body catalysts and of transferring media still lay in an unknown background. Until chemistry entered into i t and laid open this field, the practice of medicine would have to go on as it has in the past by cut-and-try method and the dubious art of experiment and observation. Even in chemical industry the same kind of wistful warning has been sounded. In the public addresses of Dr. M. A. Stine, Chemical Director of the du Pont Company, he gave utterance to the statement that industry has caught up with chemistry and physics and until a new set of facts was accumulated and laid out for inspection industry could not be expected to make its maximum stride. In the quest of new facts and more facts, the du Pont Company has just recently built and equipped a new laboratory for research in the field of pure science and it will pour millions of dollars into making up this deficiency in the output of the pure science research of our colleges and universities. The insistency of this demand is even seen in the very institutions that were created to accelerate the processes of industrial research. The problems studied in the Mellon Institute often seem remote from industrial application and the newly created Battelle Memorial Institute with its large staff of research workers announces that it will largely confine itself to research in the field of pure science. From the tfend of this movement and the anxious hesitancy of our industrial leaders i t is evident that the highest type of cooperation between the universities and industry is the promotion of research within the university itself. What the precise nature of that research may be is immaterial as long as the frontier of our knowledge is pushed out.
* Presented at the Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Portland, Oregon, April 7,1928.
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It is impossible and also needless to place an evaluation upon a newly discovered fact. In 1861 Pfliicker, a German physicist, published his ohservation that a magnetic field'caused an electric arc to deflect itself from a straight to a curved path. Forty years later when Samuel Eyde went to his professor of physics, Theodore Birkeland, a t the University of Christiania, to discuss means for increasing the surface of an arc, he was told of the observation made many years before by PAiicker. Thus was born the Birkeland-Eyde method of nitrogen fixation which has been so potent in the foreground of the synthetic nitrogen industry, and which in turn has safeguarded the world's food supply against the exhaustion of the Chilean deposits. When Faraday for the first time demonstrated in a lecture before the Royal Society the fundamental principle of electromagnetic current some one in the audience said, "All very nice but what use is i t ? ' F a r a d a y replied, "Perhaps some day you can tax it." That was nearly one hundred years ago, and in 1925 one of the largest manufacturers of electrical machinery in the United States paid an income tax of over seven and one-fourth million dollars. These two citations should be ample to show the dependence of industry upon the production of facts-the contribution of knowledge resulting from research and scientific investigation apart from immediate application to industry. This function of the university cannot wisely be diminished by industry and it must be fostered and encouraged in every way possible by providing a free and untrammeled environment in the university itself. Today we are especially concerned with the contribution of scientific research to the pulp and paper industry and the question that is uppermost in our minds is the means of contact between this industry and the research that is possible within the university. Before we can find this common ground let us see what interests are common and what problems are of joint interest. The chemical nature of the reactions in the conversion of wood into paper is often obscured by the maze of intricate, extensive, and delicate mechanical operations which are required. Nevertheless, the pulp mill and the paper mill too are essentially chemical plants. A long list of chemicals is required by the industry considered as a whole. Sulfur, lime dolomite, soda ash, liquid chlorine, hypochlorites, sulfate of soda, sulfite of aluminum, sodium resinate, glue, sodium silicate, starch, clay, casein, calcium sulfate, barium sulfate, and numerous dyes constitute the list of raw materials which must he assembled. Numerous transformations in the processes add greatly to the list. The industry must deal with sulfur dioxide, bisulfite, sulfurous acid, caustic soda, and sodium sulfide. Often salt is electrolyzed for chlorine and caustic soda, and hydrogen is
available as a by-product. Sometimes tannin is a by-product as is also turpentine. Even the mechanical processes are surrounded by sets of facts whose fundamental properties are defined in terms which are often not understood. The modification of the colloidal properties of the fibers, the distribution of the fibers into a wet sheet or mat, the development of cohesion between the fibers and the breaking of the colloid by heat, are some of the major reactions in the every-day process. Closely related to them are side reactions such as the coating of the fibers with waterresistant materials, the hydrolytic disintegration of the fiber by acids and the effect of electrolytes in the water-suspendingmedium upon the colloidal nature of the fibers.'
These reactions are the subject matter of chemistry and physics and in the domain of these two sciences are to be found the facts that are necessary for their control. Whenever the university adds to a fuller understanding of these fundamental concepts it may be said to be cooperating with the industry to the fullest extent. There is another aspect, however, that is perhaps not so fully recognized by the university in its scheme of work and that is the technological aspect which requires a special adaptability of technical facts to the industry. I t is in this field that the industry itself has made commendable progress, but it is a field to which the university may well contribute more fully in the future than it has done in the past. A brief review of some of the advances will indicate the nature of the work which must be done in the university if it will desire to measure up more fully to its opportunity. The consumption of steam for the digesters, for drying the paper,.for heating the bleach liquor and the wash water has been enormous. Much of it is lost in the relief gases of the digesters, or in the contents of the digesters when blown; in the condensate from the black liquor evaporators; in the stack gases from the boilers and black liquor incinerators; and in the warm air which is passed over the paper machine driers. The introduction of heat interchangers and accumulators offers an inviting opportunity to the technologist for effecting economies in mill operation. The flow of fluids is of especial significance when it is remembered that water is the chief conveyor in the pulp mill. That it is not fully understood is evident from the fact that in some mills as little as 2500 gallons to as high as 40,000 gallons per ton of paper is used. When it is remembered that this water contains fiber, involves the consumption of stehm and in many cases of chemicals for water softening, the reduction in water usage will constitute an important factor. During the past few years marked progress has been made in the field of high-pressure reactions. Recently, the use of such pressures in the Rue, Chem.Md.En&, 35,15-7 (1928).
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disintegration of fibers has been made in the production of masonite pressed board but its application to pulp making still awaits the experimentalist. The introduction of suction filters in dewatering operations, of the countercurrent diffusion system in leaching of black ash and washing of pulp, of sedimentation equipment, of the rod mill as an efficientrefiner for knots and screenings and beating engine for pulp and the emulsification of rosin size, testify to the progress made in the technology of pulp and paper making. The problem of drying pulp still causes serious consideration. The colloid character of the fibers is a determinant in such properties as shrinkage, stretch, warping, curling of the edges, and opacity. The factors of humidity and rate of drying are still somewhat vague. The growing tendency of legislation to interfere with the discharge of pulp wastes into streams calls for the introduction of new methods of recovery that are far from satisfactory solution. The economic reburning of lime sludge bas eliminated one kind of waste, but the problem of sulfite waste liquor is a serious one in many localities. To what extent the university curriculum may contribute to the solution of the technological problems enumerated seems a t first sight somewhat remote. Perhaps the most obvious plan would be the institution of special courses in pulp and paper making such as have been established in a few institutions in the United States and Canada, or the more common establishment of governmental agencies as the special laboratories a t Toronto, Canada, and Madison, Wisconsin. But the need for diversified training in fundamentals rather than in the specific is far more appealing to those in charge of our educational programs. The need for technological training has been distinctly recognized in planning the chemical engineering curricula now offered in some sixty institutions in the United States. In these curricula, inaddition to chemistry and physics, emphasisis laid upon mathematics and engineering and more recently there has been developed a course dealing with the unit operations of manufacturing. In this course, use is made of engineering methods as applied to the flow of fluids, flow of heat, grinding, evaporation, drying, distillation, mechanical separation, filtration, humidifying diffusion, adsorption, and extraction. Each operation is surrounded by the facts which are pertinent to it, and by means of data contributed from chemistry, physics, mathematics, the various formulas and computations are utilized for governing and controlling the operations. Essentially, it is a course that correlates the material scattered throughout the whole curriculum. It establishes a broadminded technical judgment that enables the scientific worker to reach into the appropriate field of science for the tools required to adjust and reconstruct a given process or operation in industry. It is possible, for example, to cover the essentials of every operation in the pulp mill without ever once mentioning the word pulp. In providing such training
for industry, the university is engaged in the closest cooperation possible. Thus far we have endeavored to show the community of interest between industry and the normal functioning of the university. Upon its research and its output of trained men industry may depend for its means to make progress toward greater efficiency and the solution of its problems. There are, however, other devices for making the planes of interest coincide more closely. The faculties of our institutions and the technical executives of industry might well meet often together in the tent of common interest. The problems of the pulp industty might in many cases become the problems of research in the university laboratory. The facilities of the latter are often ideal for carrying on investigations totally unsuited to the plant laboratory. The plant on the other hand affords opportunity for adaptation not possessed by the laboratory. The two together make for conciseness and precision in investigation that add not only to its interest but remove it from the highly academic and theoretical nature that characterizes the research of the university. At the recent meeting of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry were presented a number of papers on the development of a method for determining the weight of a given area of a moving web of material. This is accomplished by the possibility of detecting minute changes in weight and length by measuring the changes in capacitance of a radio condenser whereby a continuous record of all the material passing through the condenser plates is given. Although great advances have been made in the application of radio telegraphy in communication, very few applications to commercial purposes have been made, but through the efforts of an amateur radio enthusiast we now have a means of determining and controlling the moisture in paper drying as well as the weight of the paper being made on a paper machine. By means of this radio apparatus a method is available for the automatic control of steam for the driers. A more uniform sheet is made and less wood pulp is used to make a desirable sheet. It permits the paper manufacturer to reduce the cost of his paper and gives the printer a more desirable product, easier to print, and free from static. The example quoted is indicative of the application of some of the newer phases of scientific experimentation and by its very remoteness from the field of paper making illustrates the gain that may he expected when the industry closely affiliates itself with those who are constantly moving about in the midst of scientific progress. The ways and means of a closer affiliation between industry and our colleges and universities can perhaps not he specified. One way is that chosen in this meeting today. We have invited the representatives of the industry to meet with us in this discussion and we are also planning to visit the industries. In this mutual intercourse we are taking a step toward the place of communal
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interest. Another means here on the Pacific Coast is the organization of a section of the Technical Association of Pulp and Paper Manufacturers and the holding of meetings for the discussion of technical problems in the pulp industry. Before concluding it may be permissible to assure industry that the universities of the country and of the Pacific Northwest are keenly conscious of the responsibility for the progress of industry. The place of research in the university is continually becoming more prominent. The training of men with a suitable background for industry will be uppermost in our purpose. Beyond that the doors of our colleges and universities will be open in welcome to the representatives of industry for mutual helpfulness and cooperation.
