Mineral or Vegetable Fuel ?
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By the Editor.
Recent investigations have made it amply clear that old conceptions anent yielda of liquid fuel from the various mineral resources of the United Kingdom must be considerably revised. Improved and properly-controlled systems of destructive distillation, new methods of effecting the process known as" cracking" cheap hydro-carbon oils (including creosote), and the recovery of by-products which have hitherto been wasted, instead of conserved, are generic examples of the underlying causes which render such a revision essential to a true understandingof the present situation in relation to modern road transport.
Multiplying Processes.
It was commonly accepted, only a year ago, that a high estimate for home-produced fuels was a maximum yield of 10 million gallons per annum. How different is the prospect now. There is absolute knowledge of available henzole supplies from recovery ovens in excess of 15 million gallons per annum, with early prospects of this total reaching double that {luantity; if occasion arose, and if orders were given for ordinary town gas to be stripped of its benzote, at least another 40 million gallons per annum can be rendered available forthwith ; by "cracking " creosote -oil, which raw material is obtainable within the country, a further 50 million gallons per annum of motor spirit is practically assured to us, subject to a reasonable interval of time for the establishment of the requisite plant at a number of centres, or at individual -coal-tar-distilling works. Beyond the foregoing, and well within sight of production, we have the yield of suitable motor spirit from a large number of shales and shale-like deposits, in which category we class so-called cannel coal. Much may be expected from the last-named branch, whilst peat promises to come within practical and commercial range. now that the problem of excluding the water by mechanical pressure has been solved by the Frankett process.
eompre,ssed coal-gas can be utilized in special eases of road service ; it has already replaced petrol for much bench-testing.
Home Production 70,000,000 Gallons a Year; by the end of 1915.
We are not laying ourselves open to any charge of -optimism, when we state that by the end of the year 1915 at the latest the available total of home-produced motor spirits., of a character which is suitable for use, in existing engines, will certainly be not lees than at the rate of 70 million gallons per annum, from exclu-sively home sources as regarde the raw material, and without reckoning the potential yield, which may be -turned to account at any time of emergency by stripping town gas of its benzole.
The variety of the foregoing home sources of supply of mineral fuel is obvious ; their exhaustion, on any accepted statistical basis of eomputation, will certainly not concern our generation, nor the next. It may become of moment next century, and we will grant that posterity has a claim upon us not to ignore them. Allowance, too, must be made for improvements in the processes that are involve& and they will defer the -evil day of any re-assertion of the present temporary case, in which we find ourselves unpleasantly placed, of real dependence upon imported fuel.
Alcohol Manufacture Needs Vitriol, Coal, and Lime.
The claims of vegetable fuel are based upon the theories of unlimited supply and distribution in the world. By cultivation, subject to
the limits of the soil of any particular country, it should lid possibleto make alcohol anywhere and everywhere. ‘A'a agree, it the Polar regions and the deserts be excepted. The product would be one and the same chemical substance, and the new fuel would be suitable for the new types of engines which we are told will be constructed hereafter in large numbers to enable alcohol to be used. steaders will do well to remember that alcohol cannot be used with advantage or safety in an ordinary petrol engine, whilst any of the mineral fuels to which we have referred can be so used.
Appreciation of the diverse sources of alcohol is probably not as widespread as it might be. Alcohol can be made by fermentation from any sugar ; the sugars in their turn, other than cane sugar, can be made by treating starch or cellulose with sulphuric acid. All cereals and roots contain starch, and all plants and woods contain cellulose. The cycle of production is simple—provided the vitriol can be taken to the fields or to the forests. Coal and lime are also required for the processes.
The Case of South Africa.
We are aware that some countries, of which South Africa is one, is crying out for alcohol as a fuel, and for the right classes of engines in which to burn the alcohol when it is available for that purpose. South Africa has not been treated generously by the oil magnates, and it is sorely pressed for that reason, as well as through the ravages of the tsetse fly. Animal transport, there and elsewhere, is impeded or impossible. There may be an absence of Excise regulations as we know them, in the Union of South Africa, but the ample supply of cereals or timber may not compensate the lack of cheap supplies of the other essential—the vitriol. We should think that it is probably fully as difficult to transport carboys of vitriol as it is drums of petrol, but we may be wrong. We doubt the saving in fuel cost, when alcohol for power runs free and mirestrieted—if that day come. It is not a practicable scheme to lay down vitriol ohambere at many centres in a country like South Africa, because pyrites, the chief raw material for the, production of that acid, is principally found in Spain, whilst other factors, as in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, will dictate the establishment of the necessary vitriol-producing industry in certain places only. The idea that alcohol can be cheaply and widely produced in South Africa has yet to be proved sound in practice, and we should be sorry to specify alcoholtype engines yet awhile. On the other hand, we admire the enterprise and confidence of the few British makers who have decided to get ready for a possible new demand by starting upon suitable engine designs.
More Likely 2s. a Gallon than 1s.
The broad question of price will ultimately settle the claims of alcohol, and we believe they will be settled adversely. It has never yet. been demonstrated in any part of the world that alcohol can be commercially produced so that it can be sold at is. per gallon. 'We should put the figure at an average of nearer 2s. per gallon, and at the latter figure its chances of competing successfully, other than in exceptional instances which may or may not count in the aggregate, are hopeless, in comparison with the known range and extent of present and visible supplies of motor spirit from mineral sources. We give our vote unhesitatingly for the claims of the mineral kingdom in this fuel problem.