Tallow

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Tallow

Tallow is a rendered

Rendering (industrial)

Rendering is a process that converts waste animal biological tissue into stable, value-added materials. Rendering can refer to any processing of animal byproducts into more useful materials, or more narrowly to the rendering of whole animal fatty tissue into purified fats like lard or tallow....
form of beef

Beef

Beef is the culinary name for meat from bovines, especially domestic cattle . Beef is one of the principal meats used in the cuisine of Australia, European cuisine and the Americas, and is also important in Africa, East Asia, and Southeast Asia....
or mutton fat

Fat

Fats consist of a wide group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and largely insoluble in water. Chemistry, fats are generally ester of glycerol and fatty acids....
, processed from suet

Suet

Suet is raw beef or Lamb fat, especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys.Suet has a melting point of between 45? and 50?C....
. It is solid at room temperature. Unlike suet, tallow can be stored for extended periods without the need for refrigeration

Refrigeration

Refrigeration is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space, or from a substance, and moving it to a place where it is unobjectionable....
to prevent decomposition

Decomposition

Decomposition refers to the process by which tissues of dead organisms break down into simpler forms of matter. Such a breakdown of dead organisms is essential for new growth and development of living organisms because it recycles the finite chemical constituents and frees up the limited physical space in the biome....
, provided it is kept in an airtight container to prevent oxidation.

Rendered fat obtained from pig

Pig

Pigs, also called hogs or swine, are a genus of even-toed ungulates within the Family Suidae. The name pig, hog, or swine most commonly refers to the Domestic pig in everyday parlance, but technically encompasses several distinct species, including the Wild Boar....
s is known as lard
Lard

Lard is Domestic pig fat in both its Rendering and unrendered forms. Lard was commonly used in many cuisines as a cooking fat or shortening, or as a Spread similar to butter....
.

Industrially, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton fat. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, including its melting point

Melting point

The melting point of a solid is the temperature range at which it changes states of matter from solid to liquid. At the melting point the solid and liquid phase exist in equilibrium....
, which is also known as titre.

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Encyclopedia

Tallow is a rendered

Rendering (industrial)

Beef

Fat

Suet

Refrigeration

Refrigeration is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space, or from a substance, and moving it to a place where it is unobjectionable....
to prevent decomposition

Decomposition

Pig

Melting point

Uses

Tallow is used in animal feed, to make soap

SOAP

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks....
, for cooking

Cooking

Cooking is the process of preparing food by applying heat, selecting, measuring and combining of ingredients in an ordered procedure for producing safe and edible food....
, and as a bird food

Birdfeeding

Bird feeding is the activity of feeding wild birds, often by means of a bird feeder....
. It can be used as a raw material for the production of biodiesel

Biodiesel

Biodiesel refers to a non-petroleum-based diesel fuel consisting of long chain alkyl esters, made by transesterification of vegetable oil or animal fat , which can be used in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles....
and other oleochemical

Oleochemical

Oleochemicals are chemicals derived from biological Vegetable oils or fats. They are analogous to petrochemicals which are chemicals derived from petroleum....
s. Historically, it was used to make tallow candle

Candle

A candle is a source of light, and sometimes a source of heat, consisting of a solid block of fuel and an embedded candle wick.Today, most candles are made from paraffin....
s, which were a cheaper alternative to wax

Wax

Wax has traditionally referred to a substance that is secreted by bees and used by them in constructing their honeycombs.It is an imprecisely defined term generally understood to be a substance with properties similar to beeswax, namely...
candles.

Before switching to pure vegetable oil in 1990, the McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving nearly 58 million customers daily. McDonald's primarily sells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken products, French fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshakes, and desserts....
corporation cooked its french fries

French fries

French fries , chips , fries, or French-fried potatoes are thin strips of potato that have been deep-frying. A distinction is sometimes made between fries and chips; whereby North Americans sometimes refer to any elongated pieces of fried potatoes as fries, while in the UK, long slices of potatoes are sometimes called '...
in a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil

Cottonseed oil

Cottonseed oil is a vegetable oil extracted from the seeds of the cotton plant after the cotton has been removed. It must be refined to remove gossypol, a naturally occurring toxin that protects the cotton plant from insect damage....
.

Tallow is used in the steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.14% by weight , depending on grade. Carbon is the most cost-effective alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten....
rolling industry to provide the required lubrication as the sheet steel is compressed through the steel rollers. There is a trend towards replacing tallow based lubrication

Lubrication

Lubrication is the process, or technique employed to reduce wear of one or both surfaces in close proximity, and moving relative to each another, by interposing a substance called lubricant between the surfaces to carry or to help carry the load between the opposing surfaces....
with synthetic oils in rolling applications for surface cleanliness reasons.

Tallow can also be used as flux

Flux (metallurgy)

In metallurgy, a flux is a chemical cleaning agent which facilitates soldering, brazing, and welding by removing oxidation from the metals to be joined....
for soldering

Soldering

Soldering is a process in which two or more metal items are joined together by melting and flowing a filler metal into the joint, the filler metal having a relatively low melting point....
.

Tallow is also the primary ingredient in some leather conditioners.

The use of tallow or lard to lubricate rifles was the spark that started the Indian Rebellion of 1857

Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of British Honourable East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the Upper Gangetic Plains moist deciduous forests and central India, with the major hostilities confined to present-day Uttar Pr...
. To load the new Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle, the sepoys had to bite the cartridge open. It was believed that the paper cartridges that were standard issue with the rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims, or tallow (beef fat), regarded as sacred to Hindus.

Tallow, along with beeswax, was also used in the creation of lubricant for American Civil War ammunition used in the Springfield Rifle Musket.

Tallow is also now being used to make an environmentally friendly, biodegradable motor oil by a Stamford, Conn. based company called Green Earth Technologies.

Composition

The composition of the fatty acids is typically as follows:

Saturated fatty acids:

Palmitic acid
Palmitic acid

Palmitic acid,CH314COOH or hexadecanoic acid in IUPAC nomenclature, is one of the most common saturated fatty acids found in animals and plants....
: 26 %
Stearic acid
Stearic acid

Stearic acid or 18:0 is a saturated fatty acid. It is a waxy solid, and its chemical formula is C18H36O2....
: 14 %
Myristic acid
Myristic acid

Myristic acid, also called tetradecanoic acid or 14:0 is a common saturated fatty acid with the molecular formula CH312COOH....
: 3 %

Monounsaturated fatty acids:

Oleic acid
Oleic acid

Oleic acid is a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid fatty acid found in various animal and vegetable sources. It has the formula C18H34O2 ....
: 47 %
Palmitoleic acid
Palmitoleic acid

Palmitoleic acid, or -9-hexadecenoic acid, is an Fatty acid monounsaturated fat fatty acid that is a common constituent of the glycerides of human adipose tissue....
: 3 %

Polyunsaturated fatty acids:

Linoleic acid
Linoleic acid

Linoleic acid is an unsaturated omega-6 fatty acid. It is a colorless liquid. In physiological literature, it is called 18:2. Chemically, linoleic acid is a carboxylic acid with an 18-carbon chain and two cis double bonds; the first double bond is located at the sixth carbon from the omega end....
: 3 %
Linolenic acid
Linolenic acid

Linolenic acid can refer to either of two fatty acids:*alpha-Linolenic acid – an Omega-3 fatty acid found in many vegetable oils. The unmodified term linolenic acid most commonly refers to this substance....
: 1 %