The Production of Fuel Oil and Coal-Gas

Abstract

MUCH attention has been devoted recently to developing the home production of fuel oil, the needs of the Navy and difficulties of transport rendering this imperative. Several well-informed articles have appeared in the Press, and the subject was dealt with in NATURE of February 28 (p. 506). Opinion is divided among experts as to the probability of finding petroleum in any quantity in this country, but Lord Cow-dray, who> has been so closely associated with the remarkable developments of the Mexican and other fields, has expressed the view that the prospects are distinctly promising, and has backed his opinion by making alternative offers on behalf of his firm to the Government, either to place the services of the firm's expert staffs at its disposal for the period of the war, free of cost, or to drill at the firm's own expense subject to certain areas (being reserved to them. He estimated that this offer committed his firm to a probable expenditure of 500,000l. It is obvious that the first step should be to prove or disprove the existence of oil in paying quantities, under such regulations that national interests in any oil discovered are properly safeguarded. Details as to royalties, conditions of production, etc., can well wait for future settlement. The alternative to natural oil is production by distillation processes. For some years about three million tons of oil-shale have been produced in Soot-land and retorted, but other oil-yielding minerals, such as coal, cannel-coal, and blackband ironstone, are possible sources. Large quantities.of cannel are available, much of which is left in the mine or thrown on the dump as unsuitable for fuel, on account of its high ash content, which is seldom below 10 per cent. One ton of high-quality cannel may yield more than "forty gallons of oil; the average yield may be taken as twenty gallons per ton; of this soime 50–60 per cent, would be fuel oil. Such oils more nearly approach the natural petroleum products in compositton than do the ordinary coal products, and also furnish good yields of valuable paraffin wax. An announcement appeared in the Times (March 8), bearing the impress of official origin, that tests on cannel in existing gasworks retorts have given satisfactory results, with extraordinarily high yields of fuel oil and ammonia. It is to be hoped that this foreshadows early production, since little extra retorting land collecting plant will be required.