Oil by Bugs

If a new process devised by John Woods Beckman, Oakland, Calif., industrial chemist, proves commercially practicable, people will have tiny "bugs" to thank for their soap, salad oil, synthetic hot dogs,* margarin, shortening and such commercial products as Mazola, Wesson Oil, Snowdrift, Crisco, Nuco Butter.

Vegetable oils occurring in cottonseed, linseed, copra, peanuts, are held in microscopic cells. About these cells there is a hard crust, largely cellulose, which must be cracked to release the oil. Of the three commercial methods, which produce some seven million tons of oil per year, the most used is the pressure method.

The seeds or nuts are shredded to a meal, crushed with giant hydraulic presses which exert 300 atmospheres. The cell walls are ruptured, out trickles the oil. But this is expensive.

Researcher Beckman studied the cells, concluded that there must be some bacteria which would eat the cellulose walls, release the oil. In brewer's malt he found the bacterium Bacillus delbrueckia, which was apparently hungry enough to accomplish this for him.

Into a vacuum vat he introduced his bacteria, shredded copra, powdered limestone, water. After keeping the temperature at 50DEG C. for six days he uncapped the vat, found oil floating on the top of the mixture.

Advantages pointed out for the new method, over the pressure method devised by the ancient Chinese: no great expense for initial plant installation, no expert labor required, low maintenance cost. The resulting oil is purer than that recovered by other methods, and the residue in the vats makes an almost predigested cattle food, superior to the "cake" derived by other methods.

* Dr. David Wesson of the Wesson Oil & Snowdrift Co., inventor of Wesson (cottonseed) Oil, is working on a hot dog which will be made from the "cake'' residue left after the oil has been pressed from cottonseed (TIME, March 3).

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