"DRY ICE" WELL

Evening Star, Issue 22228, 4 January 1936, Page 10

"DRY ICE" WELL

NEW INDUSTRY POSSIBLE The first lease in American history for operating a “ dry ice ” well has been signed. Mr Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of Interior, is the one to sign it. The well produces almost pure carbon dioxide gas, commercially known when compressed as dry ice, and is located in Carbon County, Utah. Dry ice is so cold that it boils on regular ice. A brick of ice crean. thoroughly “ cooled ” by dry ice is just a brick, and nothing else. Commercial use of dry ice as a preservative for refrigeration is not new, but hitherto it has seldom been _ produced except in local plants artificially. The dry ice well was drilled in January, 1924, revealing a gas content under terrific pressure, of more than 98 per cent, pure carbon dioxide. The people who drilled the well scratched then* heads. They: didn’t know what to do with it. It was too cold to touch. Accordingly they plugged the well up again and temporarily abandoned it. Now' the lessee, the Famham Dome Petroleum Co., and the operating company, the Carbon Dioxice and Chemical Co., believe they can work out means of shipping the carbon dioxide without great loss, either in liquid or solid form. Dry ice looks like the regular thing, though actually it is a solidified gas. It is proposed to use it in refrigerator cars in place of ice packed in brine. Not only is it a lot colder, but it is not messy; dry ice does not melt—it just disappears. The computed open flow of the well is 1,600,000 cubic, feet per day, but geologists believe that only 1,000,000 cubic feet per day can be withdrawn, because the release of pressure at the foot of the well will cause about 600,000 cubic feet daily to be frozen up in the sands.