26 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



on the increase to such an extent that in the year past the 

 consumption of gasoline exceeded the yield. The prob- 

 lem of keeping the supply ahead of the demand is already 

 shaping itself as a definite question which must be an- 

 swered in the near future. 



Take another illustration: W. R. Ormandy, writing 

 in the London Gas World for August, 1914, states ''The 

 advantages of oil over coal as a source of power for many 

 purposes, but particularly for naval purposes have lately 

 been so vigorously canvassed and so exhaustively dis- 

 cussed by engineering experts, that there is now no pur- 

 pose in dilating upon them * * * it becomes much more 

 pertinent at the moment to consider what resources we 

 have for securing our supplies at home * * *. Public at- 

 tention has been directed to the possibility of producing 

 oils for the Navy from bituminous coal, shale, peat, or 

 even sewage matter". 



Our own Secretary of the Navy in a recent article in 

 one of our super-popular prints has stated that the stoker 

 force required to shovel coal on one of the great ocean 

 liners is 275 men, and where oil is substituted the crew for 

 the corresponding work drops to 17 or practically 6 per 

 cent ; that the steaming range with a given fuel capacity 

 is practically doubled and the time between ports reduced 

 by 25 per cent. 



These are only a few instances which might be multi- 

 plied indefinitely. The fact is that oil as a fuel for 

 power purposes, whether we like it or not, is here to stay 

 and we are fast approachng the necessity of finding aug- 

 mented supplies. 



As for the use of gas as a fuel, we are destined to see 

 even more revolutionary changes. Coal burned under a 

 steam generator may deliver say 12 per cent of its power 

 in the form of effective work. A gas engine may deliver 

 30 per cent of its heat in the form of work, a margin much 

 more than enough to pay the toll of converting the solid 

 fuel into the gas form, leaving a generous surplus of ef- 

 ficiency for the gas produced from a given unit of solid 

 fuel. 



