The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-20
OXYGEN MAKERS EXPERIMENTING
 ON EXPLOSIVES
Another New Plant Be- gins Operations In
 Birmingham

The Standard Gas Products company whose new plant with capital employed of about $150,000, began operations July 10 is already conducting expert. ments with oxygen as an explosive force which may have far reaching eff. feet on the industrial situation in the Birmingham district.
 The oxygen plant, which has just be. gun operations, is the only one of its kind in Alabama which is financed and operated by Birmingham men. The company plans to build an acetylene plant in the near future.
 The officers, directors and stockhold- CTS are almost entirely leading citizens of Birmingham, lathough Mir. Wilcox, the president of the company, was born and educated in New York city. For eleven years he has directed the operations of oxygen plants through out the south and the Standard Gas Products company of Alabama will de- rive the benefit of MT. Wilcox's ex- perience in the oxygen business as well as the engineering and sales director ship of the men affiliated with him in other plants located throughout the south.
 There is more or less mystery in the minds of many as to just what an oxygen plant is and what the product is used for.
 Oxygen, which in its pure state is a gas, is the commonest thing in nature Almost everything you see has oxygen in it, in chemical combination, and the air which we breathe is composed of OhnIlf O0 fraa
 Used In Many Ways
 Oxygen is used commercially in many diversified ways. By its use, steel beams and plates can be cut up like so much cheese. Nearly all of the steel scrap of the country is cut up by means of the oxy-aeetylene torch.
 Oxygen combined with acetylene is employed extensively for welding. The oxy-acetylene flame attains a tempera- ture of $500 degrees F. and tie in tensity of the heat will melt almost any known substance.
 The largest users of this gas are the iron and steel mills and the railroads, which consume immense quantities. It has been said that the oxy-aeetylene flame will weld anything but a broken heart.
 During the great war when ex- plosives became scarce in Europe, it became almost impossible to secure any for industrial uses, so a process was developed in which liquid oxygen combined with finely divided carbon. such as lamp black, was made in the form of cartridge similar to dyna- mite and by means of an electric detonator, exploded with about the same violence as dynamite. This dis cOvery has now assumed tremendous proportions and plants are being built in this country for that purpose alone.
 While the principal uses for oxygen are above outlined there are constantly being added new uses for this product.
 Under High Pressure
 Oxygen is dispensed in steel cylinders compressed to a pressure of about 2,OOO pounds to the square inch. There are a number of ways of manufacturing this gas, but the most practical one is to iquify air and by means of partial distillatiOn, separate the oxygen from the other gases in the air.
 The reception which the Standard Gas Products company of Alabama has been met with has been most flattering and the officials of this company are most optimistic of the future. Prepa- rations are now being made to double the capacity of the plant as the indica- tions already are, that the present out put will be entirely inadequate to supply the demand of the "Steel City of the Universe"