LAMP for June, 1944 (Standard Oil Company TofUENew Jersey, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City), is full of chemistry---oil chemistry, of course. Its lead article, "The great green gasoline," is a very readable account of the development of aviation gasoline and is accompanied by a very clever series of cartoon-pictures entitled "Iso-octane; Story of a molecule." This pictorial story of a rather complicated chemical process has many good instructional ideas which would be of interest to teachers. Another article. "Cyclone in a cylinder," describes the de· velopment and operation of the new "fluid catalytic" process of cracking. It is of enough interest to quote from it, as follows: "Though the American petroleum industry is the largest in the world. it could not have achieved a daily production of morc than 400,(X)() barrels of tOO-octane gasoline without the relatively new refinery process, catalytic cracking. The cracking-and today the major cracking method used in the production of lOCI-octane gasoline-is known as the Fluid catalyst process. "A Fluid catalyst unit is an awe-inspiring but highly docile chemical machine, towering in some cases to a height of 200 feet, with its huge steel drums and its labyrinthine pipelines standing open to the weathe.r. In full operation, with its powdered catalyst whirling in a white storm in the reactor, the. exterior of the great machine is motionless and all but soundless. It is apparently unattended by human hands. It looks idle. There is nothing in its exterior to indicate the huge scale of operations within its walls-nothing except the dials, meters, and gages on the long panel in the control room, where a small crew controls the monster's hourly intake of air, gas, live steam, catalyst, oil, and water. "And yet, idle though it appears, its production of raw mate.· rials for tOO-octane gasoline makes it a key contributor to the mastery of the skies which the Allies have won in this first major air war in history. "It is a long step from the black crude oil to a clear grccndyed product as highly synthetic as lOO-octane aviation gasoline. This is a very different fuel from ordinary gasoline formerly obtained by distillation alone. Distillation averaged 20 barrels of gasoline for every 100 barrels of crude. The yield has since been doubled by subjecting the heavier fractions of the crude to high temperatures and varying pressures so as to 'crack' their hcavy molecules into the lighter and more volatile molecules of gasoline. This process, known as 'cracking,' has made it possible to obtain as much as -1,5 barrels of gasoline. from 100 barrels of crude. "The early application of cracking made use of heat and pressure alone. It increased the gasoline yield, and as soon as knock was identified as a characteristic of the fuel, cracked gasoline was found to possess an improved anti-knock quality. How· ever, for two rcasons this process of thermal cracking could not be applied to aviation gasoline: (1) the improvement in antiknock quality was not enough, and (2) cracked gasoline was not sufficiently susceptible to tetraethyllead. "For both of these reasons, the technicians worked for some time to improve the cracking process and a solution involving
the usc of a catalyst, and ht'.llcc known as catalytic cracking, was being developed when the war camc. The use of a catalyst made it possible to control the cracking reaction and so to produce a gasoline higher in octane rating and more susceptible to tetraethyl lead. Catalytic cracking produccs more than 50 per cent of the enormous volume of loo·octane gasoline pouring from American refineries today."
There follows an account of the more technical details of the operation of the "fluid" catalyst, which is really a finely divided solid which, in the gas stream of oil vapors behaves as a fluid. It is "picked up and carried along by incoming oil vapor to the reactor where the oil vapor is cracked. Separated from the cracked vapor, the catalyst is carried by an air stream to the regenerator where the carbon which has been deposited on the catalyst in the reactor is burned off. The purified catalyst, separated from the spent air, is returned to the incoming oil vapor to repeat the process."
The war has caused considerable interest in the Romanian oil deposits and refineries. especially since the American hombing of Ploesti in August, 1943. Shell News, August, 1944 (Shell Oil Company, 50 West 50th St., New York City), carries an article on "Romania" which tells something of Romania as an oilproducing country and shows some excellent pictures of the homhing raids, which inciden tally destroyed one of the Shell refineries there. Also, "An industry is born" is an interesting historical account of the early days when petroleum was first discovered in Pennsylvania.
Shell Progress, J uly-August, 1944 (Shell Oil Company, 50 West 50th St., New York City), like most of the trade literature, is largely devoted to war applications of its particular products, hut it also tells how a pharmaceutical concern (The Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan) has turned its facilities into the production of blood serum albumin. the use of which is in many ways superior to that of the more common hlood plasma. A number of the lesser-known metals have some strange and important chemical applications. Zirconium. for example, is used as a primer in flash bulbs and fireworks, and as a "getter" in the production of high vacua; lithium compounds have uses in ceramics, in air conditioning, and as welding fluxes; strontium is used in pyrotechnics and in fluorescent lamps; titanium in as widely different places as false teeth and welding rods; cresium in medicines and electronic devices. These are among the things discussed in an article, "Wonderful," in the July numher of Esso Oi/ways (Penola, Inc., 26 Broadway, New York City).
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