Technical Paper 258, Department of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, Secretary, Bureau of Mines, H. Foster Bain, Director, By Cracking Heavier Oils, Vol. 258 (Classic Reprint)

By E. W. Dean and W. A. Jacobs. INTRODUCTION. COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE OF CRACKING. The ordinary processes of refining crude petroleum yield a series of products differing widely in properties and commercial desirability. Those required for the smaller types of internal combustion engines, such as are now generally used in airplanes, motor boats, farm tractors, motor trucks, and automobiles, are in greatest demand. Kerosene and fuel oil, which are used to produce light, heat, or power in competition with other more plentiful resources, such as coal, are less desirable with regard both to commercial profit and the conservation of natural resources. Of the two types of products used in internal combustion engines lubricants and gasoline the former does not seem as yet to offer a problem in the conservation of resources. Gasoline is, however, being produced in such quantities that its continued use on the present scale threatens to bring about the practical exhaustion of the countrys underground supply of crude petroleum in the course of a few generations at most. The Bureau of Mines knows of no more important problem facing the country to-day than the conservation of this valuable natural resource, and has undertaken through the present investigation and other studies to promote greater efficiency in the utilization of crude petroleum. The Bureau of Mines does not, of course, believe that to convert all kerosene and fuel oil into gasoline is either desirable or possible, and recognizes, moreover, the fact that conservation may be effected by other means than the increased production of gasoline for example, by the wider use of the highly efficient types of heavy-oil internalcombustion engines. Nevertheless, it is apparent that, for the present at least, the proportionate production of volatile distillates from crude petroleum should be increased. The most importa
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