Evening star., 1943-07-06
High-0ctane Gasoline
Plants Born From
M-Foot BIueprints
BY HOWARD w. BLAKESLEE,
Associated Press Science Editor.


BY HOWARD w. BLAKESLEE,
Associated Press Science Editor.
CHICAGO, July 6.-An eight-hour
day often seems like only five min
utes to men planning great 100
octane gasoline plants as they work
in a 22d floor room of a Chicago
skyscraper.
They make huge blueprints, some
times 40 feet long. On these blue
prints they engineer and design a
complete plant, which may cost up
to $4,000, 900.
No two plants ever are alike. Such
is the speed of progress Of Americas S
cooperative petroleum industry that
each blueprint Is different and con-
tains Improvements over the pre-
ceding plant And time is always
urgent, for the great blueprints are
airmailed all over the Allied world,
part of the production planned to
overwhelm the Axis.
Chemical Line Detailed.
The prints are made in the draft
Ing engineering department of the
Universal Oil Products Co. AS the
huge blue sheet. covered with white,
red and yellow lines. comes into final
form. the operators forget time in
the fascination of doing something
new.
The great blueprints are not alone
the structural designs of buildings
that may be 200 feet high and hun
dreds of feet long They are also
the complete plans of a chemical
line, huge structure where crude
oil enters one end and aviation gas
oline and other war products emerge
from the other end.
The blueprints cover every last
detail, Joint, pipe, furnace, pump,
safety mechanism, column, dimen-
sion, valve. They show where each
part Ats into miles OF processing
All OF this has to be automatic in
operation. and this means virtual
perfection on the blueprint.
In the completed plant. human
hands guide the operation only by
turning valves here and there A
plant costing sl4,0oO,OO0 is operated
by less than 100 men. counting all
three shifts
BY the time each big blueprint
reaches the finished stage, fully 200
experts have worked on it, In addi-
tion, its lines contain the results of
suggestions by men from other COM
panies, and sometimes from other
countries. who come here under the
cooperative arrangements of Allied
war industry.
The problem that causes men to
forget time Is the conversion. on
paper. of a little plant. feet high,
into one 200 feet high; from one that
produces one barrel an hour into
$4,000 barrels an hour
The little plant really exists. as
pilot plant. The big one cannot be
made simply by multiplying by 200
or $4,000 or any other number Some
dimensions increase only few
inches. Always there are new
puzzles
But those. saids the head drafts
man. ARE not headaches. When we
get them, day goes by like five
minutes"
A new design that recently has
been intriguing the planners is
cat chamber the diameter of
ballroom floor. high as church, and
set on top OF 200 foot tower.
Cat" means catalyst. This cat
alyst is a new one, a powder fine as
talcum, that flows like water. This
catalyst is Americas newest method
OF making 100 -octane aviation gaso-
line.
The nature of the catalySt is a
military secret, but some astonishing
facts about It's flow were published,
with authorization of the War De-
partment, at the Detroit meeting OF
the American Chemical Society last
April
Using the cat tower. huge op-
Grating plant can do away with vir-
tualy all moving parts and driving
machinery Set the cat dust high
enough, with tons enough of it in
the great tower, and it forms
head like a water tower, whose
pressure forces the catalyst to f1ow
everywhere through the pipes OF the
gasoline cracking process.
Heat is a necessity OF this and
other cracking processes The re-
markable dust, besides being nearly
automatic in its movements, also in
one cycle produces part Of the
needed heat.
Decarbonized for Use Again.
Normally lis dust is nearly snow
white. But after use, it is returned
to the cat tower coal black, coated
with carbon picked up while crack
ing petroleum products. Hot air
blown into the tower chamber burns
off the carbon. This burning occurs
without flames, but converts the
tower chamber into useful furnace.
After the carbon burns of, the
catalytic dust again flows out to
meet oil vapors; to do its cracking
Job over again, and keeps on re-
peating, months at a time, without
stop.
The big blueprints weigh around
a pound each. The heaviest weighed
3 pounds. Accompanying the large
prints are hundreds of smaller ones
showing details. AS much as 400
pounds of blueprints have been
shipped from this department in
one day.
Airmail does not accept some OF
the heavier prints. A system OF
tracing on lightweight paper has
been devised. These t1imsy copies
are flown sometimes to distant lands,
where copying machines reproduce
them on blueprint paper.
Then. presently, one more sector
OF the American arsenal is produc-
ing where submarines may not men
ace its output.
Dutch Doctors Arrested
S~ N>-@e:~ H-