938 INDUSTRIAL A S D ENGINEERING CHELMIXTRY
9
treated fuels are capable of use in automobile engines of
efficiency far higher than the average efficiency now obtain-
able.
Scientific Research
The advances in the petroleum industry during the last
half-century have been made in spite of the lack of any
sustained broad program of pure scientific research, similar
to the movement upon which the coal-tar industry and its
dependents, the modern dye, synthetic, pharmaceutical,
and explosive industries, were founded. ILIr. Rockefeller
The Cotton Seed and Its Products'
By David Wesson
SOUTHERNCOTTONOIL Co., NEW YORK,N. Y.
OMEBODY has called the cotton seed the southern
S farmers' pocket money, because it is the only part of
his crop for which he receives ready cash, after he
has met his obligations for fertilizer and the necessities of
life, against which he has pledged the staple.
I n round figures there is a ton of cotton seed for every
two bales of cotton made. The cotton is the big crop.
At 20 cents per pound, a 500-pound bale brings the farmer
one hundred dollars. With seed a t thirty-two dollars per
ton, which has been the ruling price during the past year,
the seed has been worth sixteen dollars for every bale of
cotton grown. I n other words, during the past season the
seed was roughly worth about 16 per cent as much as the
cotton.
It was not always thus. Many people now living well
remember the time when the seed was considered a nuisance,
and was thrown into the streams or burned, while the more
progressive farmers made it into compost and used it for
fertilizer. Some of the states passed laws forbidding the
throwing of the seed into streams used for drinking water
and fishing. I n other places gin owners were fined for al-
lowing the seed to remain in the neighborhood of towns and
villages after it had commenced to decompose.
Although cotton oil mills were started in various parts
of the South early in the last century, it was not till about
1870 that the seed was worked to any extent. I n that
year about 4 per cent of the entire seed crop was milled into
oil and cake. At the present time about SO per cent of the
seed crop goes to the mills, the balance being saved for plant-
ing.
During the past season the cotton crop was 16 million
bales. This would have made about 8 million tons of seed
worth something like 256 million dollars delivered a t the
mills. Probably not over 6.5 million tons found their way
to the oil mills, where it was worked into oil cake, meal,
hulls, and linters.
Notwithstanding the vast importance and great value
of the cottonseed crop, the commercial dealings in the seed
have always been carried on under the supposition that seed
is seed, and the price has been regulated by supply and de-
mand rather than by the contents of the seed in oil and
ammonia, As a result great losses have been sustained
by the mills and unfair receipts by the farmers who, selling
on this basis of supply and demand, frequently obtain
better prices for poor seed than for that rich in oil. The
intelligent mill owner can protect himself to some extent
1 Received July 17, 1926.
Vol. 18, No.
having taken the initiative by establishing a fund of $260,-
000 for the promotion of pure scientific research in fields
related to the petroleum industry, it is hoped that among
chemists, a t least, petroleum will be a preferred field for
investigation during the next generation. Given a founda-
tion knowledge of the chemistry of petroleum and its COQ-
stituents comparable to the existing knowledge of the identity
and chemical behavior of the homologs of benzene, i t is
hoped that progress will be made a t an accelerated rate-
commensurate with the ever-growing importance of petroleum
to civilization.
by obtaining seed analyses on the seed from various districts
and buying only from those districts where the seed shows
a good percentage of oil.
The composition of the seed is affected by character of
the soil, fertilizer used, weather, and the closeness with which
it is ginned. The more staple removed in the ginning the
smaller the percentage of hulls and the higher the percentage
of meats.
The Department of Agriculture has been making a careful
investigation of the practicability of grading cotton seed in
the same manner as corn and wheat. I n a very interesting
report before the Interstate Cottonseed Crushers Con-
vention in New Orleans, May 13, 1926, G. s. Illeloy, of the
Bureau of Agricultural Economics, bases his grades on the
assumption of the proportional ralues of the various seed
products as follows: oil 52.5, meal 34.5, hulls 7.1, linters
5.9 per cent. He gives tables showing percentages of meats
running from 41 to 60 per cent with oil ,n meats running
from 33 to 39 per cent, or from 270.6 pounds to 468 pounds
of oil per ton of seed. With these enormous variations
it is evident that the mill manager who does not know the
content of his seed is buying a pig in a poke.
Milling
I n the operation of milling the seed is first cleaned by
passing over shaking screens to remove the sand and trash
and then over magnets to remove the nails and pieces of
iron that are often present. The cleaned seed then goes
to the linter, which is a kind of gin for the removal of the
short staple left on the seed by the cotton gins. The amount
of lint removed depends on the demand and also on how
closely the seed was ginned before delivery to the mill.
Where a very long staple is desired, only 20 or 30 pounds
of lint are cut per ton. Such linters can be worked into yarn
and bring a high price. Ordinary practice, however, is to
cut 50 to 75 pounds per ton. Such lint is short of staple and
contains more or less hull particles.
During the war it was common practice to cut from
100 to 150 pounds of lint per ton. This contained consid-
erable impurity which did not interfere with working up the
lint with caustic soda and chlorine for munition purposes.
When peace was declared, large quantities of this low-
grade lint, left on hand a t the mills, was worked up for paper
stock of a choice quality which competed with that made from
rags. After the war there was a demand for better quality
lint and when the munition linters were exhausted the paper
stock manufacture died a natural death.
September, 1926 I X D VSTRIAL A N D EA’GINEERING CHEMISTRY
Linters are used in the manufacture of rayon, smokeless
powder, celluloid, photographic films, lacquers, artificial
leather, mattresses, upholstery, batting, and absorbent
cotton. The production of linters for the past season, t o
May 31, was 1,090,367 bales of 500 pounds each.
The seed on leaving the linters goes to the hullers, which
are cutting mills where the seed is chopped u p fine before
passing over the screens which separate the meats from the
hulls. In practice some of the hulls are allowed to go into
the meats, as in this way the valuable meats are more easily
kept out of the hulls. The hulls are either baled or sold
loose for corn fodder. They are of value chiefly :is roughage
and have about the feeding value of poor hay. The sepa-
rated meats are conveyed to the crushing rolls which rupture
the oil cells, after which they are cooked in steam-jacketed
kettles. I n most modern mills these are arranged one above
the other, so that cooking is practically a continuous process.
The cooked meal is made into cakes in the cake formers
and placed between the plates of the hydraulic: presses in
camel’s-hail mats known as press cloth. Under slowly
increasing pressure of‘ 1500 to 2000 pounds per square inch,
the oil flows from the presses, leaving behind a hard dense
cake, carrying an alerage of 6 per cent of oil. The cake
contains an average of 37 to 42 per cent of protein and is
usually bold on a fat and protein basis for export or ground
into meal for domestic use. I n this form it is the cheapest
known source of protein for cattle food. When made from
sound seed and fed with the proper forage it can be used
safely and with splendid results.
Improvements in Milling Practice
The increasing demand for cottonseed oil has brought
about a number of improvements in the practice of milling
cotton seed during the past twenty-five years. Greatly
improved machinery has been developed for the separation
of the meats from the hulls. Under the old system of milling,
Cottonseed Huller of 1900
when seed mas very cheap, frequently a large percentage
of meats was allowed to go into the hulls. Now the case is
just the reverse; this of course results in a poorer quality
of meal, but a great saving in the valuable part of the seed.
Comparisons between the d d type of huller and those used a t
the present time are shown in the accompanying illustrations.
Probably the greatest improvement in oil-mill operation
has been the adoption of the French heaters. These are
939
run on the continuous system and are almost automatic
in their action, largely eliminating the old rule-of-thumb
method in vogue in the older mills. The old system of cook-
ing required a number of separate kettles, each one being
run on a batch basis. This resulted in very irregular work,
as the seed often varied considerably in composition, es-
pecially in moisture content. The “cook” was the most
important man in the press room, and on him depended
Heaters of 1900
largely the successful operation of the meal, as it was due
to his judgment that the meal was cooked to just the right
point to yield the most oil. With the French cookers the
irregularities due to the change of the character of the seed
are largely eliminated and uniformity of product is the result.
The accompanying table gives comparative results of oil-
mill practice of twenty-five years ago and today for eastern
seed.
Mill Yields per Ton of Seed
1901 1026
Oil 300 337.5
Cake (or meal) 675 1010
Hulls 950 373
Linters 30 155
Loss 45 1211
Refining
The crude oil as it runs from the presses is claret colored
and, when made from sound seed, sweet and pleasant in
flavor. It contains, however. coloring matters and various
materials from the seed, which not only destroy its keeping
qualities, but interfere with its use as a food. The oil is
easily refined with caustic soda. The soda combines \Tit11
free fatty acid, coloring matters, and other organic impurities
and, under proper conditions of agitation and temperature,
causes a flocculent precipitate which rapidly settles leaving
a clear, yellow, supernatant oil.
This briefly is the principle underlying refining of crude
cottonseed oil, which has been employed ever since the oil
has been used for edible purposes. Application of the
principle has varied from time to time and in different
refineries. The process is carried on in large tanks, holding
from 60,000 to 100,000 pounds of oil, and provided with agi-
tating machinery and heating coils. Caustic soda in correct
amounts determined by analysis of the oil is run into the tanks
and thoroughly mixed, after which, by continuous agitation
and the raising of the temperature, “the soapstock” coagu-
lates into flakes, which keep increasing in size. The operation
is stopped when the flakes separate and drop rapidly. The
styles of tanks and design of agitators vary considerably
in different refineries. Twenty-five years ago i t was quite
customary to use a blast of air for agitation, but this has
940 I N D CSTRIAL A N D EhTGIiVEERING CHEMISTRY Vol. 18, No. 9 I

been superseded almost entirely by mechanical stirrers. PRODUCTION OF WIPU'TER OIL-Cottonseed oil as received
Aside from improvements in the shapes of the kettles and a from the refinery always carries about 25 per cent of un-
more intelligent use of caustic soda, there has been little saturated glycerides, which cause it to congeal a t low temper-
improvement in the refining of the crude oil during the past atures. By cooling the oil slowly a large proportion of
twenty-five or thirty years. glycerides crystallize out, so that they can be removed by
Soapstock under the average conditions carries down filter-pressing. The resulting oil will remain clear for a
with it 20 to 25 per cent of entrained oil. Until about ten long time, a t 0" C., and is known as winter oil. The residue
years ago this was always lost as, ,soapstock. The best in the filter presses, known as cottonseed stearin, is utilized
modern refineries are in the manufacture of cooking fats. Winter oil is used in
now equipped w i t h the manufacture of salad oils, mayonnaise dressings, and
centrifugal apparatus, certain well-advertised proprietary brands of oil sold on the
which saves about 60 American market.
per cent of the oil thus SOAPSTOCK TREATMENl-The soapstock removed from
carried down in the the crude oil in the process of refining is decomposed by
soapstock. This sulfuric acid, which also precipitates certain impurities.
means a saving of 1 The remaining neutral oil in it is hydrolyzed by the Twitchell
to 1.5 per cent of oil process, and the dark, impure fatty acids are submitted to
on the average good distillation under vacuum. The usual results are 20 per
quality of crude oil cent of pitch, which is used in roofing material, paints, and
worked. rubber substitutes. The distilled fatty acids are light in
The yellow oil as color and form a valuable material for soap-makers and
received from refining manufacturers of lubricating compounds.
kettles is too dark for
use in cooking fats Utilization of Protein Meal as Food
and other products,
and has to be removed To date, chemistry has been applied largely to refining
by filtration. Up to and improving the oil. There is little more to be done ex-
t h e p r e s e n t time cept to improve economies in production and improve the
fuller's earth has been color. The latter will not add to its value as a food. The
found to be the most residue after extraction of the oil-namely, the cottonseed
efficient b l e a c h i n g cake-has received little attention except for the purpose
material. Its action of determining oil and protein. The protein of the cotton-
seems to be that of seed has been found to have a high biologic value, which
an adsorbent. It also means i t can largely replace meat in the diet. It has been
seems t o a c t as a found possible by means of solvents to extract the meats
I p o 1y m e r i z er. The of the cottonseed so as to increase the yield of crude oil
Modern A u t o m a t i c Cooker earth is used as a fine
Dowder added to the
oil in kettles provided with agitators. Temperatures range
from 90" to 110' C. After agitation with the oil the earth
is removed by filter presses, leaving the oil nearly white.
The chief improvement in bleaching has been due to the addi-
tion of small quantities of activated carbon, which removes
the reddish cast from the filtered oil.
The white oil has a characteristic flavor of fuller's earth.
This is removed by passing steam through the oil a t high
temperatures in closed vessels which may or may not be
operated under reduced pressure. Deodorizing by steam
was started in 1893 and was carried on in tanks under at-
mospheric pressure. Vacuum kettles were first used in 1900,
and have been in use ever since. The details of deodorizing
oil vary in different refineries, and are more or less guarded
as trade secrets. The fundamental principles are naturally
the same, but owing to the variations in application there Bauer Bros. Co.
are considerable differences in the results obtained. Modern Disk Huller
Further Treatment for Various Uses
something like 50 pounds per ton of seed, and leave behind
HYDRoGEmTIox-The deodorized oil is used largely a meal with little taste and the color of light corn meal.
for the manufacture of lard substitutes by the addition This material, carrying about 60 per cent of protein, has
of either oleostearin or hydrogenated cottonseed oil, which been tested as a meat substitute and found to be a palatable
gives the product the proper consistency when rapidly nutritious food. It is believed that the future improvements
shelled. in the cottonseed oil industry will be the utilization of this
Hydrogenation, introduced about 1910, revolutionized valuable protein material as a human food. It is a t present
the manufacture of cooking fats. By this process cotton- far more easy of accomplishment than was the conversion
seed oil acquires the consistency of lard without the tendency of crude cottonseed oil into edible salad oils and lard sub-
to oxidation inherent in the untreated oil. Such products stitutes twenty-five years ago, and when i t is accomplished
are used to a large extent in the baking industries and for there will be another triumph added to those of the American
domestic purposes. chemist.