CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE CHEMICAL LABORATORY OF 

 CASE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE. 



INVESTIGATIONS ON THE COMPOSITION OF 



PETROLEUM. 



By Charles F. Mabery. 



Received November 5, 1900. Presented November 14, 1900. 



No. 35. — ON THE COMPOSITION OF CALIFORNIA 



PETROLEUM. 



By Charles F. Mabery and Edward J. Hudson. 



In its composition as a natural product, California petroleum is the 

 most interesting of any of the numerous petroleums that have come under 

 our observation. When its constituents are more fully understood they 

 will doubtless shed new light on the origin of petroleum, from the fact 

 that they have been subjected to less rigorous agencies during, or subse- 

 quent to, their formation than petroleums from other well-known fields. 

 In fields not yet developed, such as those of South America and Japan, 

 similar unstable oils are found. It is useless to attempt to separate from 

 these peculiar oils their individual constituents by the ordinary method 

 of fractional distillation under atmospheric pressure. Not only on account 

 of the high boiling point", but because the presence of air causes such 

 decomposition, hydrocarbons boiling above 200° cannot be separated in a 

 pure form without the aid of a vacuum. With no further knowledge of 

 the constituents of the crude oils, this explains the numerous ineffectual 

 attempts during the last thirty years to obtain acceptable refined prod- 

 ucts from California petroleum. By excluding air, as in vacuum distilla- 

 tion, with the reduction of boiling points, it is possible to distil without 

 decomposition all the hydrocarbons of the crude oils. With some modi- 

 fications of the apparatus employed in vacuum distillation of the higher 

 fractions of Pennsylvania oil, the fractional separation may be carried on 

 with little more delay than in distillation under atmospheric pressure. 



