RUBBER MAY BE MADE FROM SOME PRODUCTS OF OIL

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6756, 8 November 1928, Page 9

RUBBER MAY BE MADE FROM SOME PRODUCTS OF OIL

Possibilities of “Cracking Process” Indicated by Dr. Gustav Egloff LONDON. The fascinating possibilities of the day when rubber may be made from some products of oil in American factories instead of being tapped, from a tree in the tropics wore suggested by a paper on the “ Cracking Process, ’ ’ road by Dr. Gustav Egloff, of Chicago, before the World Fuel Conference hero. C ■ ' : ;, ■■

Recording tho ' isolation from oil of substances called “diolofincs,” of which butaditeno already has been isolated, Dr Egloff says: “Being cjosely related to rubber hydrogens, ,‘diolefines’ may well serve as starting materials for the successful production of synthetic rubber. Likewise they can be polymerised into resins which are usable as insulating material and may find employment for other multitudinous use to which the familiar phenol type of resins have been put. They should also be usable as lacquer and varnish bases.” Acetylene, aromatic hydrocarbons, 1 ‘paint-thinner” and a whole host of other products, in addition to such bet-ter-known substances as gasoline* kerosene, Diesel oil, coke and gas, are among the other products Dr-Egloff enumerates as derived from the oilcracking processes he described. Dr Egloff also blew to the wind the often discussed supposition that tho world supply of oil can give out in any period of time within sight of human civilisation. He estimated that while 16,000,000,000 barrels of oil had been so far produced, 64,000,000,000 reniain to be recovered from the existing field and that this does not touch the enormously vaster amounts in coal measures, shale and other deposits, _ which new methods ,are now beginning to render available as sources of the world’s oil supply. -