PETROL SHORTAGE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12538, 30 August 1926, Page 9

PETROL SHORTAGE

WASTEFUL METHODS FUTURE FOR~KEROSENE. LONDON, August 9. An explanation why motor-car engines “pink ” and also a warning of the approach of a world petrol shortage, due to wasteful refining methods, were included in Professor Jocelyn Thorpe’s presidential address to the chemistry section of the British Association. He recalled that petrol in pre-motor days was actually destroyed at the kerosene refineries, because there was no use for it. If the progress of the motor continued, he said, the supply of petrol would be insufficient at no distant date unless more economical methods of distillation were discovered. Petrol, at present produced by “cracking” the higher fractions of crude oil, was deficient in aromatic-hydrocarbons, thus resulting in detonating, “knocking,” or “pinking” when used in modern motor engines, whose designers had increased the compression ratio mainly to diminish petrol consumption and to increase the mileage per gallon. Certain substances, such as lead tetraethyl, were recently introduced as “anti-knock” materials. But the whole question needed research. Probably future progress would tend to produce a motor-car engine of the Diesel type, or one having a carburettor capable of effectively vapourising tho higher fractions of petroleum, when kerosene once again would become the most important part of crude petroleum.