Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/97

Rh run from the Galician fields to refineries located in and near the fields. Rumania's pipe-line system leads from the fields to refineries near and around Ploeshti. A few days before Rumania's declaration of war a Government-owned pipe line was completed from Baicai to Constantza on the Black Sea. Oil from the Balakhany-Saboontchy- Romany-Surakhany oil field is piped to refineries on the outskirts of Baku. Oil from the Bibi-Eibat field is barged to the same place. A kerosene pipe line from Baku to Batoum on the Black Sea was completed in 1905. Grosny oil is piped to refineries near the town of Grosny. The Ural-Caspian fields are connected by pipe lines with Bolshaya Rakushka, where refineries are located. Tcheleken oil is shipped to Baku refineries. Oil from the Maikop field is piped to Ekaterinodar and to the port of Tonapse on the Black Sea.

Oil from the Gemsah and Hurghada fields of Egypt is transported by pipe lines to a refinery at Suez. Pipe lines connect the Maidan-i- Naphtun field of Persia to a refinery at tidewater located at Abadan. Oil from Singu and Yenangyaung fields is piped to refineries near Rangoon, a distance of about 275 miles. Oil from the Langkat dis- trict of Sumatra is piped to refineries at Pangkalan on the Bay of Aroe. Southern Sumatra fields are connected by pipe lines to re- fineries at Pladjoe and Bagoes Koenig, both near Palembang. Java production is transported to refineries at Wonokrono and Tjepoe, Borneo oil by lighters to a refinery on the harbour of Balik Papan.

Pump Stations. In the United States, pump stations are usually 30 to 40 m. apart in the eastern and middle states, but there are cases of long-continued operation of 120 m. with one pump station. A steam pump station usually consists of a pump house, boiler house, gate house, office and tanks. Diesel engines are being installed extensively in pumping stations.

Sea Loading Lines. Sea loading lines have been installed and are operating in Mexico, Peru, Trinidad, Russia and other places. These lines make possible the loading of vessels several miles at sea and are usually installed where no deep-water harbours exist and where, because of the shallow water, the building of piers would entail prohibitive expenditure. The lines are submarine and are usually coupled ashore, stretched out on rails and drawn into the water by vessels. When it is impossible to couple the pipe ashore, this is usually done on barges or rafts and the line deposited as the work proceeds. The first sea loading line in Mexico was pulled in 1913 by the use of wooden dollies on a wooden track. At present numerous companies have sea lines along the strip of island beach between the Panuco and Tuxpam rivers.

Storage. Crude-oil storage facilities, where steel tanks or reser- voirs, are grouped together on what are generally known as tank farms, some of which in the United States have a capacity in excess of 24,000,000 barrels. Steel tanks are usually of 37,000 or 55,000 bar. capacity, placed about 500 ft. apart from centre to centre. Each tank is surrounded by a levee of sufficient height to hold the entire content of the tank and enclosed for the purpose of isolating fires. Crude oil is stored in steel tanks, concrete tanks and earthen reser- voirs, while many of the lease tanks are wooden. There were held in the United States in pipe line and tank farm storage, at the end of 1920, 138,000,000 bar. of crude oil. In addition, 21,000,000 bar. of crude oil were stored at refineries. Tanks are installed at refineries for holding oil during the running at the plantsand for storage prepar- atory to shipment to markets. Stocks of refined products held at U.S. refineries at the close of 1920 totalled 2,433,700,000 gallons. Investigation and experimentation are constantly directed to the reduction of evaporation losses of crude oil and refined products during storage. An investigation by the U.S. Bureau of Mines showed that in just one stage of handling of crude production in the mid-continent field, the volume of gasoline lost by evaporation equaled one-thirtieth of the total gasoline production of the United States. The loss occurred during a few days when oil was stored on leases before being taken by pipe line, and amounted in 1919 in the mid-continent field alone to 122, 100,000 gallons. Insulated storage tanks of about 10,000 bar. capacity are being experimented with bya few mid-continent casing-head gasoline manufacturers.

Tanks are usually protected from fire by steam lines from the boiler house so that free steam can be turned into the tanks on the approach of a thunderstorm. This steam displaces the explosive mixture in the tanks. The water spray method is also used. At pipe-line stations, and tank farms and refineries where there is a large number of tanks, a fire protective system which utilizes a frothy or foam mixture is often installed. This mixture has as its ingredients water, aluminium sulphate (crystal), sulphuric acid, ground glue, glucose, sodium bicarbonate and arsenious oxide. The system entails a piping and pumping system and the equipment includes solution tanks and foam-mixing boxes. Each storage tank has a mixingbox into which pipe lines leading from the solution tanks discharge. The boxes are outside the tanks and the foam is admitted to the tank through a raised hatchway. The substance spreads over the surface of the oil. To insure the foam reaching the surface of the blazing oil at whatever depth without the bubbles being destroyed by the impact of the drop, a series of baffles is used retarding the descent. Tanks covered with a jacket of asbestos supported by steel framework are being experimented with. Submarine storage tanks, which if required can be rested on sea bottom, have been devised.

Tank Vessels. The tank vessel plays a large part in the modern petroleum industry. It is used for transporting crude oil from produc-

ing countries and districts to refining countries and centres and for carrying refined products in bulk to the markets of the world. The world's tonnage of tank vessels (including steam, gas, sail and barge) increased from 1,525,000 gross tons in 1914 to about 4,000,000 tons at the end of 1920, with 1,100,000 tons under construction.

Great advances have been made in tanker construction and the loading and unloading of oil from tank vessels. The typical modern tanker carries 16,000 tons of oil, is equipped with quadruple expan- sion engines and boilers fired with liquid fuel, has a complete shelter deck the whole length of the vessel, oil-tight hatches and two pump rooms with pumps capable of discharging 1,200 to 1,500 tons per hour. The Diesel engine is also used for propulsion in some tankers, while the oil-fired steam-driven turbine is gaining headway. Oil cargoes are now loaded and discharged in a few hours. Devices have been perfected enabling vessels to take on a supply of fuel oil from tankers while under way on the high seas.

REFINING

Refinery Operations. The rapid expansion -of the internal-com- bustion engine which, as developed in motor vehicles, began to be of importance as a consuming agency of petroleum products in 1907, has elevated gasoline (petrol) to the ranking by-product of crude oil. More recently the conversion of coal-burning vessels and industrial plants to the use of oil and the extension of utilization of the Diesel engine (an internal-combustion engine which does not demand so volatile an oil as gasoline) in the marine and in the indus- trial fields has placed fuel oil in a position of great prominence. Even so great an increase in crude-oil production as was recorded between 1908 and 1920 could not have supplied these consuming agencies had not refining methods been improved, new processes developed, and refinery capacity greatly expanded. As in the case of crude-oil production, the greatest refinery expansion has been in the United States, where in 1915 it is estimated there were 302 refineries with a crude-oil capacity of 1,043,245 bar. daily. On Jan. I 1921 there were 415 refineries with a daily capacity of 1,888,800 barrels. The types of plants represented in this total were: 35 complete, 302 skimming, 60 wax and lubricants, 7 asphalt and 1 1 topping.

United States refineries in 1920 ran 434,000,000 bar. of crude oil, and produced 4,882,000,000 gal. of gasoline; 2,320,000,000 gal. of kerosene; 8,861,000,000 gal. of gas oil and fuel oil; 1,047,000,000 gal. of lubricating oil ; 541,000,000 Ib. of wax; 576,000 tons of coke; 1,290,000 tons of asphalt; and 1,492,000,000 gal. of miscellaneous oil. The principal refining centres in the United States are in the mid- continent territory, in the Pennsylvania region, and along the Atlan- tic, Gulf and Pacific coasts. Every large producing area has developed a refining industry, while the seaboard plants, in most instances, owe their location to strategic advantages respecting large domestic and export markets. Mexico has built up a substantial refining industry, although the largest proportion of its crude-oil production is transported to the United States for topping and refining, in most part by Atlantic and Gulf coast plants. Most of the Mexican plants are topping plants (that is, they divide the crude into tops, distillates and gas and fuel oils), but there are a few more complete refineries. All the refineries are located along or adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico or the eastern seaboard, comparatively near the producing fields. In 1920 there were 12 refineries reported in operation in Mexico with a daily capacity of 19,600 cub. metres of refined products. Four of these refineries were classified as complete plants, six as topping plants and two as natural-gas gasoline plants. There were five plants under construction, two complete refineries, one a topping plant and one a natural-gas gasoline plant. In 1920 61,000,000 bar. of Mexican crude oil were run by U.S. refineries. Canada has developed a sub- stantial refining industry, these refineries operating on Canadian, United States, Mexican and Peruvian crude oil. There are one or more refineries or topping plants in Venezuela, the I. of Curacao, Colombia, Trinidad, Peru and Argentina, these operating on domestic oil or oil from nearby territories. Galician crude oil is handled by refineries located within a radius of about 150 m. from the city of Lemberg, in and near the oil fields, and also by the Con- tinental refineries in Hungary, Austria and Germany. It is estimated that Galician refineries are capable of handling about 40% of the crude production. Rumania's refineries are mainly located in the Prahova district and also in the Bacau, Dambovita, Constantza and Neamt districts. In 1920 Rumanian refineries used 988,000 tons of petroleum, and produced 212,000 tons of benzine, 197,000 tons of lamp oil, 30,000 tons of lubricants and 473,000 tons of fuel oil. The output of the different refined products by Russian refineries in 1916 (last figures available) totalled 56,917 million poods of fuel oil, 6,926 million poods of lubricating oils, 135 million poods of solar oils, 944 million poods of benzine and 57 million poods of paraffin. Russian refineries are located at Blacktown, suburb of Baku, these running oil from the Baku fields, at Grosny and Bolshaya Rakushka and at Ekaterinodar and Shirvansky. There are local refineries in Egypt, Persia, India, the East Indies and Japan, and Persian oil is also being handled by a refinery at Swansea, Wales. _

Continuous Distillation. Continuous-process stills were first introduced by Norman Henderson, a British chemist, in connexion with the distillation of shale-oil. This system was subsequently adopted by jnany refiners of petroleum. A modification of Hender- son's benches of stills was the addition to each member of the series