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Wood-alcohol can not yet be made cheaper than gasolene, and is not so easy to burn, so that it is slow in reaching an important place in the industrial world; but gas and gasolene prices will advance, and better methods of manufacturing and burning alcohol will be found, and then we shall have a fuel that can take the place of either coal or petroleum for lighting or power.
They had just completed, as a relief from the nightly round of lunch rooms, a wood-alcohol meal of canned baked beans, cheese, crackers, and tinned sweet cakes. Even Mrs. Blair, at an age when the years are at the throat of a woman, shriveling it, had opened her blouse at the neck, revealing an unsuspected survival of its whiteness.
This is a practical use for it, since it will conserve the coal now used for that purpose, furnish satisfactory power without smoke or dirt, provide cheap power in regions that have no coal mines, and lastly may be made to yield valuable by-products: ammonia, acetic acid, paraffin, tar, creosote, and wood-alcohol.
It is even said that the hundreds of acres of sage-brush in the West that have always been considered worse than useless can be made into wood-alcohol and thus become a valuable product. It can be used for any purpose that gasolene can, although a different style burner is required.
In the miscellaneous group we find wood-alcohol, dye-wood, medicinal barks, roots and galls; precious gums, resins and all of the spices; the various kinds of excelsior used for packing, bedding and upholstery; wood-pulp and paper, inlaid work, vegetable ivory, and cocoanut shells; the entire series of willow ware, and wooden, or hollow ware.
It is thought that wood-alcohol will be of especial use to the farmer, since he has so many waste vegetable products, has so much need of power in small quantities and is far from the sources of public service power, such as electric and gas plants. Alcohol-driven motors can be used to take the place of the labor of both horses and men on the farm.
Then comes the wood for distillation into wood-alcohol for use in manufacture and to furnish power in engines. Next in quantity used comes veneer, which has two entirely different uses. The highest grade woods are cut to about one-twentieth of an inch and glued to cheaper woods as an outside finish in the making of furniture.
Wood-alcohol produces ammonia as a by-product, is used in the manufacture of dyes and coal-tar products, of smokeless powder, of varnishes, and of imitation silks made from cotton. Report National Conservation Commission. Reports of Geological Survey. Conservation of Ores and Related Minerals. Conservation of Mineral Resources. Industrial Alcohol and Its Uses. W. H. Wiley. Bulletin, 269.
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