The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-08-19
Manufacture OF Kerosene.

How many housckecpers, as they fill
their lamps with kerosene oil or their
summer stoves with gasoline, have any
idea how these oils are made? And yet
few miles from Chicago, at Whiting, Ind,
is the largest oil refinery in the world
Every one knows that in its crude state
Che oil comes out of the earth, but it would
be an utterly useless discovery were it not
for the brains and money used in the re-
lining of the raw material. BY the use of
the brains and money, however, not only
the clear oil, but several other products,
are drawn from the crude material.
Naphtha, benzine gasoline and kero-
sene, the last often called coal or illumi-
mating oil, belong to the same family
The three first named, being lighter oils,
do not require nearly so much handling to
bring them to perfection as the kerosene.
This, of course, is easy to believe, but
when 1t Is said that from the same crude
OIL after all the lighter oils have been dis
titled out wax is made so closely resem-
bling the product of the bee as to deceive
even an expert, and that it is used in
chewing gum factories candle factories
laundries and even i'm candy factories, one
is often met with II polite look of doubt or
an incredulous shrug of the shoulders
Their and say that hundreds of homes In
Whiting and in Chicago have been made
comfortable this winter by the refuse that
adheres to the bottom and sides of the
"stills' after even the wax has been
pressed out. This refuse makes good
COKE is easily lighted and is warmer,
cleaner and cheaper than coal Hundreds
of tons are removed from the stills daily
before they are " charged" % in, and hun
dreds of those who use this fuel do not
know that it was once crude oil, dug in
the Ohio fields and piuod on to Whiting
The carbon used in electric lights is also
made from this cole. y uthing is wasted.
As the most conn on the kerosene oil is
perhaps the most Interesting of the prod
ucts, After leaving the crude stills it APP
pears again in the "sWeetening'' stills, or
In the compound cylinders, " which per-
form the same work as the sweetening
stills, but is Il newer invention and is at
ented by an outsider, who allows only 40
in each refinery, The sweeteners" form
an important factory in the refining of
Ohio oil Owing to the compound"
before mentioned and the continuous fric-
ton of the immense wire brushes which
keep the oil in a mad whirl it loses much
of its bad odor. 1t is again vapored off,
cooled in the condenser boxes and passed
OIL into the steam stills" for the next
process.
In the steam stills it is treated just the
same us in the two IreSiu processes, with
the addition Of washing by steam from
perforated pipes passing through it, 1t is
"VapCrcd' off as before, and now one
would suppose that it was ready for use.
Not quite The kerosene oil now passes
into the agitator for the final process. The
agitator is n funnel shaped tank in which
the oil is treated with acid and beaten and
blown about by II machine called n blower
and washed by torrents of water until IL
roars like the lake in "A storm, Every parti-
Gle of foreign matter is thus expelled. 1t
is then pumped off into the storage tanks
for shipping. Chicago Tribune