Show HOW KEROSENE IS REFINED something abent a remarkable american industry biow many housekeepers as aney fill their lamps with kerosene oil or their summer stoves with gasoline have any idea how these oils are made and yet a few miles from chicago at whiting ind is the largest oil refinery in the world naphtha benzine gasoline or kerosene the last often called coal or il ruminating lumina ting oil belong to the sama family the three first named being lighter oils do not require nearly ao much handling to bring them to perfection as the kerosene this of course is easy to believe but when it is said that from the same crude oil after all the lighter oils have been distilled oui wax is made so closely resembling the product of the bee as to deceive even an expert and that it is used in chewing gum factories candle factories laundries and even in candy factories one is often met with a polite look of doubt or an incredulous shrug of the shoulders yet it is so it is possible to go yet furcho and say that hundreds of honra L whiting and chicago will be made comfortable this winter by the refuse that adheres to the bottom and sides of the stills after even the wax has been pressed out this ref refi i use makes a good coke is easily lighted and is warmer cleaner and cheaper than coal of tons are removed from the stills daily before they are charged again and hundreds hund reus of those who use this fuel do not know that it was once crude oil dug in the ohio fields and piped on to whiting the carbon used in electric lights is also made coke nothing is vested As alio most common the kerosene oil is perhaps the most interesting of the products after leaving the crude stil it appears again in sweetening stills or in the compound cylinders which perform the same work as the sweetening stills but in a newer invention and is patented by an hutst der who allows only 40 in each refinery the sweeteners form an important factor in the refining of ohio oil owing to the compound before mentioned and the continuous friction of the immense wire brushes which keep the oil in a mad whirl loses much of its bad odor it is again off cooled in the condenser boxes and passed into the steam stills for the next process in the steam stills it is treated just ju st the same as in the two previous processes with the addition of a washing by steam from pipes passing through it it is off as before and now one would suppose that it was ready cornise for nise not quite the kerosene ajl now passes into the agitator forthe final process the agitator is a funnel shaped tank in which the oil is treated with acid and beaten and blown about by a machine called a blower and washed by torrents of water until it roars like the lake ine in e storm every particle of foreign matter is thus expelled it is then pumped off into the storage tanks for shipping chicago tribune |