Founding a Furukawa electrochemical company, with hardened oils built on by-product hydrogen (1917)

What the by-product they would not throw away left behind

Electrolyse brine and hydrogen comes off, wanted or not. In 1917 there was almost no use for it. What Asahi Denka chose was to fit itself to the surplus — to hunt down a feedstock abundant and cheap enough to absorb it, which turned out to be fish oil, and to walk into the hardened-oils industry, then only a few years old. That an inorganic chemicals company reached into organic chemistry immediately after its founding looks less like a bid to diversify than like plain obedience to a process that had two outlets.

It would be going too far, though, to read this as a consistent design. Use of the by-product hydrogen began in the middle of the post-war slump, and the industrial histories record that several electrolytic soda companies went after the same thing at the same time. This was not Asahi Denka's idea alone; the period did much of the work of making firms find a use for their by-products. Even so, looking at a course that ran from soap to glycerine to artificial butter and on as far as running a dairy farm, one can say the manner of fitting the business to the by-product stayed with this company for a long time.