future petroleum supply 181 



Exhaustion of Petroleum 



However, all agree that, with the vast increase in the use of liquid 

 fuel through the automo'bile, the aeroplane, the truck, the farm tractor, 

 the locomotive, and the ship, even the present enormous supplies of 

 petroleum will soon fail to meet the ever-increasing demand for this 

 convenient form of power. Whither shall our nation turn for a sub- 

 stitute? Fortunately dame ISTature has been extremely provident to the 

 United States. In addition to giving her very large and rich oil and 

 gas fields, she has endowed her with approximately one-half of the coal 

 supply of the world, as also with enormous quantities of bituminous 

 shales, out of which both gaseous and liquid fuels can be extracted in 

 much greater volume than those yielded to the drill from old mother 

 Earth. The mountains of oil shale in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, 

 together with the coal beds and bituminous shales of nearly every State 

 in the Union, stand ready to yield up their content of oil and gas 

 through intelligent chemical and metallurgical treatment when the 

 natural sources no longer furnish an adequate supply of these convenient 

 (oil and gas) hydrocarbons. Therefore, with the fall of our mountain 

 streams and cataracts utilized in electric current for transporting our 

 railway trains over and under our hills and mountains, as also for many 

 other uses of light, heat, and power, in order to husband our vast carbon 

 resources, Americans can face the future with every assurance that their 

 heritage of fuels and water-power, if intelligently utilized and con- 

 served, will be sufficient to supply all of the necessities of civilization to 

 a far distant future. There has been a fear that with the disappearance 

 of our petroleum no practical substitute for gasoline could be found. 

 Such fears overlook the fact that from every ton of bituminous coal 

 two and one-half to three gallons of benzol can be extracted in the by- 

 product coking process, an even more efficient motor fuel for automo- 

 miles, tractors, aeroplanes, etcetera, than gasoline, while by the carbo- 

 coaP ^ process recently put into successful operation at Irviugton, New 



^DESCRIPTION OF CARBOCOAL PROCESS 



The carbocoal process includes three distinct stages : 



1. Primary distillation. 



2. Briquetting. 



3. Secondary distillation. 



In the process the by-products are recovered from the gas of both distillations. 



Primary clistillation. — The initial step in the carbocoal process is a continuous low- 

 temperature distillation. The coal to be carbonized is first ground to one-fourth of an 

 inch or smaller and then delivered to the primary retorts, where it is distilled at a rela- 



