Show kill shale hale industry industry y planned for T utah T BY JEROME B IRELAND little has been published about the possibilities ties of the oil of the western united states in fact beyond the mere knowledge that such exist people have not as a general rule given the subject much thought but now with the knowledge that the price of all kinds and grades of oil is steadily advancing a matter which is brought home by the fact that the price of gasoline has practically doubled since last summer and promises to score further advances in the near future and the further fact which is not so generally known that the great oil companies are now drawing on their reserve supplies for the first time in years the interest in methods for working the oil for commercial purposes is rapidly increasing reliable authorities state that consumption of oil products is now greater than production despite the fact that the wells of the united states are supplying crude oil at the rate of more than bar aels per year the quantity thus produced has been sufficient in the past to supply all demands and for that reason little at has been paid to the the oil from which is very similar to that from tha wells the shale oil when refined by ardi nary methods yields an average of 35 per cent kerosene 10 per cent gasoline and a large amount of paraffin the percentage of gasoline extracted undoubtedly will ba increased by the use of methods of refining especially designed for the purpose in northeastern utah the shale is found in numerous localities in utah and much of it has been filed upon by local companies probably the most extensive bed in the country is located in northeastern utah southwestern wyo ming and northwestern colorado and it is here that interesting developments of industry are soon to be carried out it has been estimated that in each of the states mentioned there is enough known shale to yield twenty billion barrels of crude oil from which more than two billion barrels of gasoline may be extracted besides the other products this estimate of possibilities of the new industry is based upon the ordinary refining methods which have been tested before and not upon theoretical experiments peri ments in a discussion of the beds mentioned an authority recently stated besides gas oline kerosene and paraffin there are other s 1 I ee e carye e aati re a rl i p y 9 r L a a f 0 I 1 Z tuff ten fa sc NN v V nl n olorf ff esy 9 sam ra 3 af er cea ace M ferrs to zer s b j 5 1 i 61 acx 6 0 o aroi f eft 3 ca i 3 41 G 9 X 3 i i jr 34 1 Z caz 0 C a Z e ori of i rac y ajeet ah e e t ael ew 0 o oo r ya I 1 4 s nac aa Z iz tri lidd ita it ta 2 or fyie ius i 0 ta 7 a r C general plan of the john D scott shale oil process pr icess products of the shale oil which are worthy of consideration for instance the gas a very good illuminating gas by the way will probably be sufficient to furnish all the heat beat required to distill the crude oil from the shale the ammonia also is a very valuable byproduct by product of the distillation ani and may be used in the manufacture of commercial fertilizer or other nitrogen compounds as the market demands the united states geological survey has examined large areas of the shale in colorado utah and wyoming and has made many distillation tests some beds of shale that are several feet thick will yield more than a barrel of oil to the ton of shale and one bed six inches thick will yield better than two barrels of crude oil to the ton of shale one ton of this shale should therefore yield nearly ten gallons of gasoline by the present commercial methods of gasoline ex t traction rac tion and larger yields may be made pos sible by new methods 70 i government watching the secretary of the interior franki 1 lin K lane said recently in reply to a senate resolution regarding gasoline and 19 referring to the shale beds of the country the development of this enormous reserve f simply awaits the time when the price of JU ft gasoline or the demand for other distills di stilla tion products warrants the utilization of this substitute source this may happen t in the future at all events these ft i are likely to be drawn upon long before the exhaustion of the petroleum fields in thia y connection it must be admitted that the government has shown a tendency to ride roughshod over the rights of owners ot of oil lands in the west and it will not be sur w if a similar tendency develop after v companies and individuals have spent their time and money in building up a great in is austry in connection with the shale lands r industry industry y in scotland it is interesting to note that in scotland it the oil shale industry has been an important te and profitable one for more than fifty years as high as 8 men being thus em aloyed yet it is stated that the average yield of oil from the shale there is much T less per ton than the proven yield from a like amount here the scottish method of Q treatment is to place the shale in all sizes te as broken in mining in an upright retorts retort to which the heat is applied from the out side it is necessary to apply excessive heat to the surface of the retort in order to get a sufficiently high temperature to the te shale in the center which must be accomplished by radiation this great heat causes the volatile por tion of the mass to pass off in the form of gases which are regarded as 8 by the methods in use there and as the by products byproducts are secured from the condensable gases this results in considerable loss it is stated that the foreign plants lose about feet of these gases to each ton of shale treated and that the average saving is only twenty three gallons of oil from each ton less than half the amount saved by test experiments in this country cost has been high in the past the high cost of distilling oil from shale in this country as compared with the low cost of piping a similar product from the wells has proven prohibitive to the development of the beds various processes are being worked out now and with more than a fair degree of success 3 one of the better known is what is called the john D scott process it is stated by the manufacturers of these machines or retorts that in comparative tests between them and the scottish process the latter saved twenty three gallons of oil to the ton and the former fifty gallons the shale being the same grade and from the same beds further it is claimed that the quality of oil wax and ammonia saved by the john D scott process was of a much better grade than that saved by the other method the exclusive rights to this process in utah are held iby by the utah oil shale company the recently organized utah oil shale products company owning acres of shale land near colton has secured irom from that corporation the right to use the process in the development of its holdings and one of the officers of the products company has supplied the following description of the methods employed the john D scott process this process provides for continuous operation era tion for the separation of the material treated for the use of inert gases for tha continuous heat acting in conjunction with heated vapors drawn down through the material treated the construction of the retort is in three separate chambers entirely individual and each self contained the first is a where the material treated is prepared for a greater heat which occurs when it is passed to the second chamber the second is an chamber where the takes place under the maximum heat applied and from which the gases are drawn off and passed into the condenser the third is a cooling chamber where the material after treatment is cooled so that combustion will not occur when the material is removed from the retort and brought in contact with the open air each chamber contains ten trays with perforated bottoms one above the other and six inches apart upon which the material is placed the loading and moving of the trays from one chamber to the others is all done by machinery the treatment requires about four and one half hours the starts at about degrees fahrenheit and final takes place placa at about degrees the temperature nay may vary depending upon the material treated the heat is contiguous and with the heated inert vapors the entire material receives the same degree of temperature and the material on each tray is completely and equally educed deduced high quality of byproduct by product because the gases from the material are brought off at a controlled low temperature tie the quality of the byproducts by products is very high because of this low heat the paraffin is not cracked and therefore a higher quality oi of oil is secured the low temperature also excludes much of the tarry matters and leaves the oil in a cleaner purer condition which very much reduces the cost of refining the construction of the retort enables a control of the heat and allows it to be drawn down through the material treated and thus to come in contact with all parts of it this secures a uniform degree of heat to just the extent necessary for proper and allows the securing of the gases in a condensable form and the saving of the products byproducts by by condensation cost of treatment the power for the machinery used in the process is supplied by gas engines which in turn are furnished with gas for f or fuel from the retort on account of the complete machinery equipment little man ual labor is required the utah oil shale company claims that the cost of treatment will not exceed 1 per der ton and that engineers report the cost at around 75 cents on various tests made of values of from 5 to 1150 per ton have been shown and with the economic treatment that seems possible with the scott process the industry should soon develop into an important on one 1 e it is even claimed that the of the oil will mean more to utah than the coal industry when the extent of the beds are taken into consideration |