The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1919-11-22

AS was stated In an article pub
lished some time ago in The Silver
State, Nevada oil-shales are richer
than those of Colorado and Utah. TIL,
states to the east have, however, OBJ
tanned the start of Nevada somewha'
in the matter of experimental worl
with shale. The following illuminat.
ing article by robert G. Dill appeared
recently in the Denver Post. Although
Mr.. Dill talks Of Colorado, his obser-
vations will be of interest in consid-
ering Nevada's shale possibilities. He
says:
After years of discourgaements
through which, however, hope con-
tinued strong in he hearts OF those
who had made a study of them, Colo
radios billions of tons of oil shales
are to be developed and the state
placed in the galaxy of oil states
with an assurance that. once estab-
lished. the industry will be productive
for a century at least.
The medium for the development
of this immensely valuable natural
resourc is the discovery by George
w. Wallace, plant engineer for the
American gas company, of such an
intimate analogy between the de-
structive distillation of coal and oil
shale that practically the same pro-
cess can be used in educting oil from
shale as is used in the production of
gas from coal; and his invention of a
retort, whose efficiency has been de-
monstrated in hundreds of tests on
a commercial scale, and which can
be made at relatively low cost as COM
pared with specially devised retorts,
in which the analogy has not beer
taken advantage of.
Before a group of thirty-five men,
including representatives of several
companies which have been investi-
eating the subject of the production
of oil from shales, and professors of
chemistry and m~ineralogy and engi-
neering, Mr.. Wallace explained his
process at the Colorado State School
of Mines. At the conclusion of the
discourse it was the unanimous YER
dict of those who listened to Mr.. Wal
lace that he had discovered what ap-
pears to be the most efficient and eco
nomical method of treating oil shales
thus far evolved.
Two of the pioneers of the oil shale
industry, Jimmy" Doyle, the discov-
erer of the Portland mine, and Mat
Callahan, who has lived with the shale
deposits for years and has ever been
their advocate, listened with the keen
est interest to the speaker and went
home convinced that their dreams of
the utilization of the vast beds of oil
shale in Colorado, Utah and Nevada
are at last about to come true.
While Mr.. Wallace's lecture was
technical in many ways, he removed
the obscurities as far as possible,
with the result that his talk was clear
and understandable. AS a gas engi-
neer of the first rank and manager of
the technical department of a $780,
100000 corporation which serves
thirty communities with gas made
from the d%istillation of coal, he drift
ed naturally into investigation of the
possibility of applying the practice
and methods of coal distillation to the
oil shales. The result is that he has
evolved a process but slightly modi-
fed from that in general use by the
larger gas manufacturing companies
of the country.
AS he explained it. Mr.. Wallace uses
a standardized gas retort with a de-
vice for the application Of heat which
insures perfect control of the temper
AZURE throughout. This heat, which
comes from the combustion of the fuel
oil resulting from destructive distilla-
ton of shale, is applied on the outer