Increased Range of Manufacture and Use of Petroleum Products

Grown out of the utilization of the liquefied petroleum gases, propane and butane, is the "bottled gas" industry giving homes in suburban and rural areas fuel for cooking, heating, and refrig eration. Chiefly supplied from natural gas, in the production of natural gasoline, and from refinery gases, these liquefied gases are members of the series of hydrocarbons predominant in gaso line. Normally gases, they are generally liquefied under moderate pressure so as to facilitate storage and transportation. The prod uct is used as a fuel in motor buses and rail cars. Furnishing exceptional heat value and easily controlled, propane and butane also are used as fuels in special industrial processing, and then again—proving their versatility—they may be used in the same plant as solvents or refrigerants before their final consumption as fuels.

Of increasing importance to the chemical industry are the chem ical products recovered from petroleum gases. Cracked gases— ethylene, propylene and butylene—readily enter in chemical com binations. Chemists make from these a product similar to glycer ine. Great quantities are used as an anti-freeze mixture for car radiators or as a basis for the manufacture of explosives. Ethylene is used for ripening fruit. The orange growers and the tomato farmers know it. The oxidation of ethylene gives ethylene oxide, a gas widely used as an insecticide for preserving the grain of wood. Also it is applied as a fumigator to ships and buildings.

Propylene and the butylenes are converted into the widely used propyl and butyl alcohols. Their acetates, applied as solvents, made over the paint industry into the lacquer industry. These alcohols are converted by oxidation and dehydration into bodies called ketones. The ketone of isopropyl alcohol is a remarkable solvent employed in the rayon, explosive, and other industries. The ketone of secondary butyl alcohol, besides being an excellent solvent for many purposes, finds an application in the making of perfumes, and tertiary butyl alcohol is used in the perfume in dustry for synthesizing artificial musks. It also is employed in the petroleum industry itself to prevent the formation of gum in cracked gasoline, and it is used for artificial resins. These are some of many uses of gases formerly wasted in the air.

Certain petroleum oils have found considerable outlets in the preparation of transparent window-shades, the spraying of coal and coke to reduce dusting, the spraying of trees and plants for killing insects, fungi, termites and other parasites, as well as in the preparation of textile oils, printing inks, paints, and numer ous other compositions.

Hydrocarbons as such, are valueless as food, since other ele ments must be present. Sugar and fats contain oxygen beside carbon and hydrogen. Meat, or to be more scientific, protein matter, contains nitrogen in addition to all these other elements.

Hence before petroleum can be utilized as a food these elements must be introduced into the hydrocarbon in their particular form. The chemist has already been successful in producing sugar and fat from petroleum. When hydrocarbons are heated with air, ozone or similar agent, fatty acids may be produced. Such hydro carbon fatty acids were fed to the German soldiers during the World War due to the great shortage of fat in Germany at that time. Since fats, such as lard, butter, oleomargarine, are mainly glycerine esthers of fatty acids, there appears to be no reason why the corresponding compound prepared from a petroleum hydro carbon such as wax should not have food values in the same range.

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pure ethyl alcohol, the active ingredient in Spiritus Frumenti, is being made in large quantities from refinery gases. Oddly enough, petroleum also yields a denaturant which is added to the alcohol to prevent unlawful diversion to this channel. Synthetic wood alcohol or methanol can be easily made from petroleum gases and steam. Acetic acids, the mouth-watering ingredient of vinegar, can also be prepared by oxidation of gases of gasoline. The neutralized sludge obtained by acid treating of petroleum has been found suitable for reducing dusting of coal as well as break ing in transit. Eggs are coated with petroleum white oils .before cold storage. Drying oils superior to linseed oil have been pre pared from petroleum. Carbon black, an important constituent of rubber tires, is obtained by the burning of petroleum natural gas.

The oil business in the United States is a mass production enterprise, turning out large volumes of standardized commodities at low cost. Mass production, together with certain characteristics of the crude product it deals with, has determined its economic structure and has largely dictated its pattern. Oil, a liquid oc curring in widely scattered localities and requiring both "wild cat" and scientific efforts for discovery, has needed specialized forms of transportation—the pipe line and tanker—invented for the purpose. With no commercial value in its crude state and made up of chemical compounds, it has required refineries to convert it into multiple products and by-products, and a great variety of marketing media as these derivatives are required in standardized form and in small units of sale at numberless points throughout the world. The industry in consequence has been likened to an hour-glass with raw material drawn from innumerable fields, con centrated into channels of flow through the transportation and refining systems, and again deploying into myriad lines of move ment to countless points of final consumption. Vast amounts of capital are essential to the operation of this system.