Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/932

 What Shall We Do for Gasoline?

��THERE are about two and one-half million automobiles in use at the present time. By the end of the year their number will be well over three million. All of them consume gasoline. There are also three hundred thousand motor-boats, forty-five thousand motor- trucks, thirty thousand gasoline farm tractors, and an untold number of stationary engines, all dependent on gasoline. Over thirty-five million barrels of gasoline are annually required to meet the demands of these many motors.

The total gasoline content of all the oil produced in this country in 191 5 is estimated at 1,892,500,000 gallons.

According to the preliminary report on the investigation of the rise in the price of gasoline, prepared by the Federal Trade Commission, the 191 5 exports of gasoline amounted to fifteen per cent of the entire gasoline content of all the crude petroleum produced in the United States within the year 191 5, Exports for the year of gasoline, naphtha, and benzene totaled eight hundred and twenty-four million, five hundred and fifty thousand gallons, as against two hundred and thirty-eight million, five hundred thousand in 1914.

We are burning up gasoline faster than we can distill it from the crude oil which we pump out of the earth. In past years so much gasoline was pro- duced that some of it could be set aside • for possible later emergencies. But even these stocks are now practically exhausted and we are living almost from hand to mouth.

It has been suggested that benzol be used. Not until the war began did the United States of America make any serious attempt to recover benzol as a by-product of coke making.

Benzol is not greatly different from gasoline. Motorists object to it because it requires adjustments in the motor. Moreover, the quantity of it available will always be so limited as to preclude widespread distribution.

What is known as casing-head gasoline has been finding increasing favor. Casing-head gasoline is literally squeezed out of natural gas just as you squeeze

��water out of a sponge. The output of gasoline thus extracted is about one million and a half barrels a year.

In the ordinary method of distill- ing petroleum, heat is applied. At low temperatures the vapors of the lighter constituents of the oil are distilled off and condensed. As the temperatures increase the heavier vapors rise; finally a heavy mass is left from which no fuel at all can be distilled. The line of demarcation between gasoline and kero- sene is ill-defined. Hence in the days when the kerosene lamp was in vogue and when gasoline could not be sold for lack of automobiles, the oil refiner retained as much gasoline in his kerosene as he dared. Nowadays the situation is reversed. Gasoline contains as much of the kerosene element as possible. From year to year, gasoline is becoming heavier and heavier. But even this device of the refiner, made necessary by the enormous demand for motor fuel, has failed to meet the situation. So, for years oil chemists have been trying to devise plans whereby kerosene itself could be subjected to further heat treatment — a heat treatment which is known as "cracking," and which serves to break up the kerosene molecules into gasoline molecules. One of the most successful of these processes is that invented by Dr. Burton. Thanks to him at least three hundred thousand automobiles are now running on cracked gasoline. More recently Dr. Rittman has come to the public notice as the inventor of a cracking process for which marvelous things are claimed. Dr. Rittman believes that the cracking process will solve the gasoline problem.

A cheap motor fuel is a vital neces- sity to the automobile industry. The cheapest at present available is kerosene. But unlike gasoline it demands a special type of carbureter — an apparatus which will perform its function far more scien- tifically and accurately than is neces- sary with gasoline. If present indica- tions mean anything at all they mean that motor car manufacturers will de- velop a type of carbureter which can be successfully used with kerosene.

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