ARTIFICIAL PETROL

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6546, 20 November 1924, Page 1

ARTIFICIAL PETROL

A FRENCH INVENTION » - —— I French piotorists (it is said) may now look forward to the pleasant prospect of unlimited supplies of petrol at a price of about 3f (9d) a gallon. This revelation, which will have a most important effect not'only on the motor industry, but on the economic position of France, was made at the exhibition of synthetic motor fuels held at Bue when the public were 1 able to see motors running on petrol which» had been obtained from lignite coke and water. MM. Andry-Bourgeois and Oliver have recently discovered that they can make petrol from aljriostany substance containing carbon. /The sample with which -they' bave given a conclusive demonstration sras made from water and lignite ;coke—a residue/which had previously /hardly any commercial value. Peat Seoal dust,* charcoal dust, and sawdust, and a number of other low-grade combustibles may be used. The new process is based on the water-gas method. Carbon containing the material mfred with water is- first converted info a mixture of bafbon dioxide and hydrogen, commonly known as watergas, which, in turn, is changed to methane,'or marsh gas. .This is passed through an apparatus ip which, under action of high frequency currents, it becomes 1 condensed into acetylene. This acetylene, in turn, is passed into vessels which the inventors call “cqtaJyseurs,” from which it emerges eventually in the form of a thick oil, Which, on being distilled, yields pure petrol, burning oil, and lubricating oil. .Of these three products, petrol is the most ceqt of the whole. The various chemiepil/processes referred to have been known for a long time, but the secret pfihe new invention lies An the “catalyseurs.”