VAULT // 1951
An excerpt from a piece published 75 years ago this month in Mechanical Engineering.
Written by James Boyd
THE HISTORY OF THE USE OF ENERGY in our country is a story of shifts from one fuel to another. As our economy has grown and changed through the years, the pattern of energy consumption also has been changing. During the first eight decades of the nineteenth century, wood was our chief source of fuel and energy; but even then mineral fuels were being rapidly substituted for it.
Beginning about the middle of the last century, anthracite and then bituminous coal began to take the market away from wood. Although wood had furnished over 90 percent of the energy during the first half of the century, it contributed only a little over 50 percent during the second half; by the end of the century it was supplying only about one fourth of the total. This shift was due to the rise of the anthracite industry; a little later, bituminous coal came along to outrank anthracite in the amount of energy supplied. Petroleum and natural gas made a somewhat slower and later start, and did not really hit their stride until the twentieth century. The use of mineral fuels has been accompanied by a rising per capita consumption—from 100 million Btu when wood was pre-eminent to about 250 million Btu today.
A scan of the original 1951 piece as it appeard in Mechanical Engineering.
Rise in Petroleum Consumption
The pattern of energy consumption in the United States has changed drastically during the first half of the twentieth century. Coal provided by far the greatest portion of our total energy supply in 1920, but petroleum, natural gas, and water power have absorbed almost the entire increase in our total requirements since then. For the past 30 years or so, the growth in petroleum and natural-gas supplies has been faster than the rate of growth of total energy requirements of our economy.
Hence oil and gas have tended to provide for United States fuel requirements as they expanded, while coal production has been relatively stable, except in periods of major emergency. Thus the proportion of our total fuel needs provided by coal declined from over 78 percent in 1920 to less than 40 percent in 1949. The share of petroleum increased in the same period from 15 percent to almost 37, and that of natural gas from 4 percent to over 19.
Since World War II, the trend toward use of oil and gas fuels has been accelerated by the construction of many long-distance pipe lines to bring natural gas to major consuming areas and by the utilization of depleted gas and oil fields in the eastern states as storage reservoirs for gas transported in summer months to augment supplies during peak demand periods in winter. Liquefied petroleum gases, used for heating and other household purposes in rural or remote areas, are today a major petroleum product. Rapid expansion in the use of diesel engines for rail and highway transport, for construction work, and for farm equipment has increased the demand for the light fuel oils. There have been record installations of space-heating equipment in the postwar years, and increased quantities of heavy fuel oils have been used in generating electricity. By far the largest amount of petroleum continues to be consumed in our 44 million motor vehicles.
The elements of petroleum supply have also undergone significant changes, particularly since the early years of World War II. The production of crude petroleum in the United States has increased by over one third since the beginning of World War II, but in this period the production of liquids extracted from natural gas has almost doubled, and imports of crude petroleum and petroleum products have about tripled in volume. The relative importance of imports is therefore much greater now than at any time in the recent past.
Venezuela is our leading source of foreign petroleum, but in recent years development of vast and highly prolific production in several countries of the Middle East has brought supplies from that remote region. From a strategic point of view, the discovery and development of major reserves of petroleum in western Canada since 1947 have great importance. These new sources of supply have already made the Dominion much less dependent upon oil produced in the United States and may in time bring about Canadian self-sufficiency in oil. A major pipe line to carry this Canadian oil to a shipping point near Duluth on Lake Superior is now nearly completed. In Mexico, recent gains in exploratory activity by the government and by sources of United States private capital suggest that the strategic supply position of North America may be further strengthened.
Total demand for oil and oil products is expected to exceed 2.4 billion barrels in 1950—a gain of about 9 percent over 1949. Domestic demand is estimated at approximately 2¹/₃ billion barrels—an increase of more than 10 percent. The trend is even more apparent when we consider the per capita annual demand of the past 30 years—4.3 barrels in 1920, 7.6 in 1930, 10.1 in 1940, and an estimated 15.5 in 1950.
Oil drillers at work in Venezuela in 1950.
Photo: Harry Deverson/Getty Images
Study of Energy Sources
As the midway point of the twentieth century, this year marks the beginning of a significant decade—a decade in which authorities in both the petroleum industry and Government have indicated that domestic petroleum production probably will pass its peak and may begin to decline. Moreover, they anticipate that this decade will witness the initial development of a new basic industry engaged in producing synthetic liquid fuels, first from natural gas, then from oil shale and coal.
Eugene Ayres, Director of the Chemistry Division of the Gulf Research and Development Company, recently summarized the fuel problem and indicated what we may expect in the near future, as follows:
“The consensus of experts in the petroleum industry, as summarized by a Congressional Committee in 1947, is that petroleum production in the United States will reach its peak between 1955 and 1960, and that by 1967, production will be no more than a billion barrels a year—about half of our present rate of consumption.”
Comparison of fuel reserves
Until accumulations of oil or gas are discovered by drilled wells, their existence and potential production are unknown, and they cannot be classed as recoverable reserves. The quantities of oil and gas that ultimately will be available from domestic fields unquestionably will prove to be far greater than the present proved reserves.
However, barring unexpected developments in atomic or solar energy, the anticipated gap widening between domestic demand and supply will have to be met by synthetic liquid fuels and imports. It is obvious that the security of our liquid-fuels position will be greatly enhanced when the supply is based in part upon solid fuels, such as coal and oil shale, which compose more than 95 percent of our proved fuel reserves.
The first synthetic gasoline to enter the market will come from natural gas, since a commercial plant for converting natural gas to liquid fuels already has been built. However, reserves of natural gas, like petroleum, are limited. Synthetic-fuel processes also can play an important part in meeting requirements for strategic chemicals. Current shortages and increasing requirements for benzene, phenol, toluene, and certain other chemicals could accelerate the schedule for constructing the initial coal-hydrogenation plants, since these chemicals would be produced from such plants in important quantities.
Several months ago the Bureau of Mines undertook a study to determine the effect of a synthetic-fuels plant in relieving shortages of certain chemicals, particularly benzene and phenol. These are important raw materials for the manufacture of many other essential products.
Vertical conveyor system moving coal.
Photo: Getty
A coal-hydrogenation plant could be operated in such a manner that the yields of benzene, toluene, and xylenes would be increased by about 25 percent, but this would result in a proportionate reduction in the yield of gasoline. Many other products are obtainable from coal, but there is no present demand for them because they have never been produced in quantity. Many of these can be recovered by minor process changes.
Shale oil likewise contains significant amounts of aromatic chemicals now in short supply. These include tar acids—phenol, cresols, and xylenols—together with tar bases, present as homologues of pyridine and quinoline. In a laboratory unit, the Bureau has demonstrated that a highly aromatic feed stock can be produced by retorting pulverized oil shale with radiant heat, a process completed in a fraction of a second. The product, a gasoline-boiling-range material with octane number near 100, may also be used as a source of aromatics. If radiant retorting can be proved commercially feasible in large-scale equipment, the yields of benzene and toluene available from oil shale by this process will be very impressive.
The patterns of fuel supply are constantly affected by technologic progress, changes in the industrial economy, competition among the fuel-supplying industries, and aggressive marketing, the supply picture, and consumer preference. The relatively rapid shift from the use of fuel gas manufactured from coal to natural gas is an example. In 1929, 1.5 million tons of bituminous coal were converted to fuel gas while 1.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas were used; in 1947, only 0.9 million tons of coal (or 25 percent less coal) were converted to gas, and 2.9 trillion cubic feet (or more than 250 percent more) of natural gas were consumed.
“The consensus of experts in the petroleum industry, as summarized by a Congressional Committee in 1947, is that petroleum production in the United States will reach its peak between 1955 and 1960, and that by 1967, production will be no more than a billion barrels a year—about half of our present rate of consumption.”
The full facts concerning the end uses of the various fuels have never been explored thoroughly. What, for example, happens to bituminous coal after it is mined? We know that some never leaves the mine tipple but is used right at the mine; some is exported; some is made into briquettes; another portion goes to utility plants; a small quantity goes to petroleum processing; some is charged in coke ovens to make fuel gas; and the remainder eventually is consumed by transportation facilities, by various manufacturing industries, and for heating commercial establishments and homes. But how much is used in each of these categories? To what extent is one type of fuel replacing another in each class of use?
“Virtual-world manikins, such as dV/Manikin, provide a relatively accurate range of sizes that you would find in the population,” Mayfield said. “This provides readily understandable feedback for designers, who have typically designed for the nonexistent average man.”
This extension of fundamental HF work beyond the traditional core of specialists is due to improvements in the usability of human-modeling software, combined with the increased importance of considering the human early on in the design process. Continued adoption of human-modeling technology will likely be based on the need to perform human-centered analysis within the context of the complete virtual product. Both the WR-21 and nuclear-propulsion projects require the manikin to be positioned within very large amounts of CAD geometry, and manipulated in real time—requirements that have heretofore inhibited the widespread deployment of human-modeling technology. VR producers are concerned with improving the quality of their manikins and with attempts at incorporating existing anthropometric packages into their software.
James Boyd was director of the U. S. Bureau of Mines in Washington, D.C.
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