Doubling Britain's Liquid-fuel Production
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EN the Billingham coal-hydro genation plant of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., is in full operation it will provide almost as much petrol as • all other existing home sources, representing about 4 per cent, of the present demand. Actually production began in February of this year and already some 12,000,000 gallons of spirit have been produced. It is a triumph for the company and for the British engineering industry that this should have been possible within 21 months of the passing of the Hydrocarbon Oils Bill which provides for all home producers a measure of security for a term of years.
The actual opening ceremony took place on October 15., when the chairman, Sir Harry McGowan conducted the Lord Privy Seal, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, around the 40-acre hydrogenation plant which forms part of the 800-acre Billingham undertaking This is the first plant in the world for the hydrogenation of petrol from bituminous coals; others in Germany and the U.S.A. are handling brown coal and petroleum oil respectively. This section of the undertaking has cost £3,000,000 of fresh capital and will give an annual output of 45,000,000 gallons of petrol, of which 30,000,000 are derived from 600,000 tons of coal and 15,000,000 gallons from tar products.
As we have stated above the output is only a small percentage of British 1324 requirements, but the commercial working of the plant Featly is of far greater importance, in that it demonstrates that it is technically possible for this country to be self-supporting in the matter of oils, with the exception of lubricants. At the present stage petrol is the end product, but the flexibility of the system allows its being used to make fuel oil, Diesel oil, propane and butane as optional products. Actually the " middle oil," which is reached at a certain stage, is a class of light fuel oil which might be used as a base for fuels for compressionignition engines. We gather, however, that at the moment its production costs would not justify its commercial employment in this way.
It is interesting to note that the inventor of the process, Dr. Bergius, was present among the guests 'at th* official opening.