FUEL FROM PLANTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 179, 11 May 1944, Page 4

FUEL FROM PLANTS.

CHEAP NEW METHOD EVOLVED SYNTHETIC COAL ALSO. SAN FRANCISCO. Announcement of a process for making gasoline and coal from farm, forest and sea plants, enough to supply the world’s needs, simpler and cheaper than other synthetic methods, was released in Cleveland by the American ; Chemical Society. The process telescopes into a l’ew hours, with heat, and pressure, what Nature took millions of years to do in forming coal and oil.. It was perfected by Dr. E. Berl, research professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Dr# Berl said, for example, that sugarcane, planted on 2.1 per cent of America’s available crop lands, could produce as much gasoline as America’s 32,000,00(1 cai;s used in 1941. If you first take the sugar from 110 tons of cane there will still be left 250 gallons of gasoline and nearly 4000 gallons of oils. The process is not limited to sugar. It will make coal or gasoline at will from sorghum, sweet potatoes, cornstalks and many other farm crops, from grass, leaves, Irish moss, seaweed, algae, wood and sawdust. In fact the farm wastes alone of one normal American year would, if they could be collected, make more than enough gasoline to run the 32,000,000 automobiles for a year. He did not give the costs, but said the oils from which gasoline would come would be made in cheap, simple apparatus. He declared that the German method of makinggasoline from coal is by comparison expensive and difficult. The synthetic coals, he said, ignite much quicker and burn faster than natural bituminous coal. They contain less sulphur. They make both porous, coke for blast furnaces and dense coke for foundries. The process comes from a study Dr. Berl started IS years ago to find out how Nature made coal and oil. He believes lie has solved this chemical problem. His method changes carbohydrates to hydrocarbons. Carbohydrates are cellulose, sugar and. starch. Get. rid of the oxygen in them, and they become hydrocarbons, which are oil and coal. The process uses internal combustion in the plant products, yielding a material that is jellylike at room temperature. Even without further treatment this semi-jell can be used for Diesel fuel. Adding hydrogen by hydrogenation converts the jell into gasoline, kerosene and lubricating oils,