A great advantage of this oil is that the flashing point is 110, and so is well above the limit, thus doing away with the dangers and troubles inseparable from the storage of light naphtha in bulk.
In using this oil as an enricher, it must be cracked in the presence of carbon, and it is of the greatest importance that the temperature should not be too high, as the benzene is easily broken down to simpler hydrocarbons of far lower illuminating value. This fact is very clearly brought out by a series of experiments I have made, in which the phenoloid oil was cracked by passing it through an iron tube packed with coke and heated to various temperatures, the hydrocarbons being much more easily broken up under these conditions than if mixed with diluents, such as water gas:
| RESULTS OBTAINED ON CRACKING PHENOLOID OIL. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| I. | II. | III. | |
| Temperature. | 600° C. | 800° C. | 1,000° C. |
| Volume of gas per gallon. | 41.6 c.f. | 76.8 c.f. | 121.6 c.f. |
| COMPOSITION OF THE GAS. | |||
| Hydrogen. | 34.0 | 36.0 | 37.0 |
| Methane. | 20.0 | 26.0 | 49.0 |
| Olefines. | 11.0 | 5.0 | Nil. |
| Ethane. | 16.0 | 9.0 | Nil. |
| Carbon monoxide. | 13.0 | 15.0 | 12.0 |
| Carbon dioxide. | 2.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 |
| Oxygen. | 2.0 | 1.0 | Nil. |
| Nitrogen. | 2.0 | 4.0 | Nil. |
This analysis shows that if the temperature is allowed to reach a cherry red, complete decomposition of the illuminating hydrocarbons is taking place, and a gas of practically no illuminating value results. The power of regulating the temperature and the body of carbon as a cracking medium in the Van Steenbergh water gas plant especially fits it for using this oil, and removes the objections which could have been urged against the lighter naphthas.
This oil is at present not in the market, but given a demand, it can be produced in four months, at the latest, in very large quantities, as the apparatus is very easy and cheap to erect, and the crude material can be plentifully obtained.
If this oil becomes, as I think it will, an important factor in the illumination of the future, it will mark as important an era in the history of our industries as any which the century has seen, as, by using it, you are giving smoke a commercial value, and this will do what the Society of Arts and the County Council have failed in—that is, to give us an improved atmosphere. If I were lecturing on an imaginary "Hygeia," I should point out that the smoke of London contains large quantities of these oils, and they, by coating the drops of mist on which they condense, give the fog that haunts our streets that peculiar richness which is so irritating and injurious to the system, and, further, by preventing the water from being again easily taken up by the air, prolong the duration of the fog. Make this oil a marketable commodity, and another twenty years will see London without a chimney; underground shafts will be run alongside the sewers; into these shafts by means of a down draught all the products of combustion from our fires will be sucked by local pumping stations, and the oil condensing in the tubes will serve in turn to illuminate our streets, instead of performing its former function of turning day into night and ruining our health; but as I am not at all sure of the engineering possibilities of such a scheme, I will leave its discovery to some other abler prophet than myself.
(To be continued.)
Lectures recently delivered before the Society of Arts, London. From the Journal of the Society.