ZACATON AS A PAPER-MAKING MATERIAL.
27
CONCLUSION. Zacaton grass may prove to be a valuable paper stock, although at it is a waste product and nourishes in a region remote from paper-manufacturing sections. the The grass can be chemically reduced to paper stock by the soda process under less drastic and less expensive conditions than those employed for the reduction of poplar wood. The well-known process, methods, and machinery employed for the manufacture of pulp from poplar wood are entirely suitable for the treatment of this material. In place of the wood-sawing, chipping, and screening machinery, a grass cutter, and possibly a duster, is present
required.
A production of 43 per cent of air-dry fiber from the air-dry grass is regarded as a very good yield, the fiber yield from poplar wood being from 46 to 48 per cent, and from esparto 43 per cent. For bleaching the stock it has been found necessary to use more bleaching powder than in the case of poplar stock. Paper manufactured from this stock has shown physical tests equal to those of a first-grade machine-finish printing paper. The paper has a very satisfactory appearance and feeling. It is realized that in these two semicommercial tests the maximum possibilities of this material in all probability have not been attained, and better results may reasonably be expected. Moreover, an experienced mill organization after a few months of operation would learn the qualities of the stock and be in a position greatly to improve the product. It would not be advisable, nor even possible, from the work here described, to make any estimate of the cost of manufacture or the value of the product. Such data can be secured only by extensive experimentation on a semicommercial scale or by actual mill operations.
