The Wisconsin tobacco reporter. (Edgerton, Wis.) 1877-1950, 1915-05-21
More and Cheaper Gasoline.


More gasoline is being used in the
world today than ever before-yet the
price of this fuel, so essential in this
era of the Observation-Disclosures engine,
is lower than it has been for many
years.
The present European war has been
termed the gasoline war and justly so,
for if deprived of this fuel the armies
engaged in the great conflict would be
compelled to suspend operations. For
transporting the field and siege guns
and for propelling the thousands OF
motor cars used in the transportation
of troops, ammunition and supplies on
the scale required in a war of such
magnitude, gasoline is a necessity, and
without it the operation of Zeppelins
and aerOplanes would be an impOssi-
bility.
But in spite of the tremendous de-
nnand made on the oil supply by reason
of the war, gasoline has been getting
cheaper. This situation is the result
of the development of improved meth
DDS of refining by which greatly in
creased supply of gasoline can be OBJ
tanned from given quantity OF crude
oil. During the past year the tank
wagon price of gasoline has fallen in
the large centers, apparently from this
cause, from 16 cents to 81 cents gal
lon. There is little doubt that the
price will go eventually still lower with
the development of the process just
discovered by Doctor Rittman, chemi-
cal engineer of the U. S. Bureau of
Mines The improved processes now
in use are held as a monopoly by one
group of refners. The new process is
to be free to all refiners who will sub
NIT to certain government regulations.
With it, it will be possible to extract
three times as much gasoline as can be
extracted by the process OF distillatlon.
To understand just what is being done
by the new process it is first necessary
to know some of the qualities of that
group of substances known as hydro
carbOns. A hydro carbon, as its name
indicates. is a combination of the chem
ical elements, hydrogen and carbon.
In the combination there is usually nj
trogen, oxygen, sulphur, or other
chemical elements in small quantities,
which are removed in the process of
refining. The range of substances pro-
duced by different combinations of
these two elements is probably the
widest to be found in the whole range
of natural products. There are about
200 hydrocarbon products, many of
them indispensable adjuncts of our
EVERYDAY life. Crude oil, or petroleum,
which is the source from which most of
these products are derived, is simply a
mixture of many hydrocarbons, which
may be separated from each other
without chemical action by the process
of distillation. Gasoline, Illuminating
oil, and lubricating oil for example, are
all present in crude oil, being mixed
together much as different kinds of
grain might be mixed. There are 9TH
er products, however, that are less OBJ
viously present in crude oil, and to pro-
duce these it is necessary to resort to
chemical action, which consists in
breaking up some of the hydrocarbons
and rearranging the atoms In molecules
of different kind. This is what is
done when oils are cracked, pro-
cess that has been used heretofore
mainly for breaking up the heavier oils
and forming their cOmponents into
gasoline molecules. 1t is one of the
peculiarities of hydrocarbons that this
breaking up and rearranging can be
done repeatedly and to practically an
unlimited extent.
The biggest feature of the new pro-
cess is that practically all the crude oil
can be converted into any hydrocarbon
desired, so that it provides means for
cracking" oils on such scale as has
not been thought possible heretofore.
Full details of the process have not
been made public, but it is reported
that the kind of hydrocarben produced
is governed solely by the degree of heat
and pressure applied. With temper
ature of 932 degrees F., for example,
the product obtained is gasoline. If
the temperature be raised to about 1112
degrees F., benzine, tOluene, and Xylol,
with small quantities of methane, creo-
sote oil, and pitch, are obtained. The
apparatus is simple and apparently does
nothing more than vaporize the crude
oil and subject the vapor to the re-
Quired temperature and pressure.
Almost simultaneously with the an
nouncement of this process, another
discovery, so remarkable that it ranks
as one of the romances of science, was
made public This consists of pro-
cess of taking paraffin, or any other
Cerivative of crude oil, and converting
it back into crude oil-in short, in TAX
ing one part of complex product and
remaking the whole product from it.
One of the significant things in con-
nection with the crude-oil products and
the vital part they play in nearly every
form of human activity, is the fact
that the supply is more than equal to
the demand, and is likely to remain so
for generations to come. The North
American continent is thought to be
one vast subterranean oil reservoir.
Oil is found from the Atlantic to the
Pacific seaboards, and from Nome to
Central America, and while there are
number of fields from which oil is be-
ing drawn in enormous quantities, these
vast resources have apparently been
touched only in spots. June Popular
Mechanics Magazine.