Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/419

Rh amount of money at its command, through its employment of expert chemists and through its extensive organization, has had a big advantage over the independents in the production of gasoline, this company having a patented process that obtains for it as much as three times the amount of gasoline from a given quantity of petroleum as the independents now obtain. There are two or three other large corporations that have an efficient process for the manufacture of gasoline, but the independents, as a whole, have never been able even to approach the results obtained by the Standard Oil Company. Now the federal government, through the efforts of Dr. Rittman, proposes to make free for the use of all of the people of this country who wish it, a process that is confidently expected to increase their yields of gasoline from crude petroleum fully 200 per cent, and perhaps more, such results having repeatedly been obtained in the laboratory. It is claimed by Dr. Rittman that his process is safer, simpler and is more economical in time than processes now in use and these are economic factors of great importance. With a steadily increasing demand for gasoline for automobiles, motor boats and engines, this fortunate discovery comes at the proper time. It is but two years ago that the automobile industry, fearful that the supply of gasoline might not be adequate for its rapidly expanding business, offered through the International Association of Recognized Automobile Clubs, a prize of $100,000 for a substitute for gasoline that would cost less than gasoline. Happily the urgency of this situation has passed and at the present time there is a plentiful supply of motor fuel to meet immediate demand. This new process adds to the hope, that in spite of the wonderful growth in the use of gasoline, there may not be any shortage in the future. It indicates an increased production of gasoline from the present production of petroleum—an output of 50,000,000 barrels instead of 2.5,000,000, as under the present methods. It will render free for use to all, the results of that efficient and intelligent research which has heretofore been only at the command of the wealthy. I am led to believe that it will not only be of inestimable value to the refiners commanding but limited capital as well as those of wealth, but also to the hundreds of thousands of users of gasoline. When it is realized that the gasoline industry each year in this country yields products amounting in value to between $100,000,000 and $150,000,000, the importance of this discovery is seen.

The second process discovered by Dr. Rittman may prove of much more value to the country than the first, in that it suggests the establishment of an industry in which Germany has heretofore been preeminent—the dye industry, and also promises indirectly a measure of national safety of incalculable import. Among necessary ingredients of high explosives used in modern warfare toluol and benzol are in the first rank. Heretofore these products have mainly been obtained in Germany and England from coal tar, and the explosives manufacturers have had to depend largely on the supply from these sources in the making of explosives. I understand that some toluol and benzol have been obtained from American coal and water-gas tars, but this supply does not begin to satisfy the present demands. The federal government now proposes to obtain the toluol and benzol from crude petroleum also. I am further informed that these produces can be produced from practically any American petroleum and that the supply can be made sufficient not only for the entire American trade but also for other purposes. This process has gone far enough to indicate that the two products can be produced at a reasonable cost. The real comforting thing, however, is that we have the knowledge that this new source of supply is at the command of our people, and that in time of great national stress, if the nation is ever called upon to defend itself, we shall be able to manufacture the most efficient and most powerful explosives known in warfare. Were it not for this discovery, it is possible that in such an emergency, we might be compelled to rely largely on the greatly inferior explosives that were used in the time of our civil war, and this would spell national disaster.

Dr. Rittman concludes from his experiments that this process may become more economical than the German method of obtaining these products from coal tar, as this process not only makes toluol and benzol, but also gasoline in considerable quantities. He intimated to me the possibility of the value of the gasoline being an important factor in paying the costs of the process. If this should prove to be true, it may result in eventually giving the United States a supremacy in the dye-stuffs industry that has for some time belonged to Germany, since toluol