The first thermal cracking method was called The Burton Process, after its inventor, William M. Burton.
The oil industry first used it in 1913. The thermal cracking process increases the quantity and quality of gasoline obtained from crude oil.
Ethyl alcohol has been used as fuel for a very long time. In a blend with turpentine known as "camphene" it was a popular lamp fuel in the first half of the 19th century. It was the fuel used in early automotive experiments by Samuel Morey, Nicholas Otto, Henry Ford and others.
Ford championed the view that ethanol was the fuel of the future that would ease the farm crisis by creating new markets for farm products.
Ethyl alcohol was blended with various fuels, including gasoline, to boost fuel anti-knock (later known as octane) well before tetra-ethyl lead was introduced. Because it has a naturally high anti-knock rating and can be used in blends or alone as a fuel in standard internal combustion engines, it was considered in the 1920s by many experts – Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, and Charles Kettering among them – to be the fuel of the future.
Ethyl leaded gasoline is the brand name choice for tetra ethyl lead (TEL), which was an anti-knock, gasoline additive discovered by General Motors researchers on Dec. 9, 1921 and introduced commercially in Ohio on Feb. 2,1923.
From 1919 to 1923 researchers believed ethyl alcohol would be the fuel of the future when oil ran out. Their original motive for creating leaded gasoline was to standardize a high compression gasoline engine that would more efficiently use ethyl alcohol in an oil-short future.
In 1970, GM announced its intention to build cars that would use unleaded gasoline.
The decision was primarily based on the need for catalytic converters to reduce other pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. Leaded gasoline had to be phased out since catalytic converters are contaminated by lead.
The phase out process took until 1986 in the US.
When the environmental crisis came to a head in 1925, GM researchers, creators of leaded gasoline, claimed in government hearings that there were no alternatives to leaded gasoline.
The general public first learned of TEL in late October,1924 when half a dozen workers went violently insane and then died, apparently from a mysterious poison they were making at a Standard oil refinery in New Jersey.
When it became clear that this poison was being put into gasoline, and that other workers had died in similar refineries, a vehement public health controversy broke out, and leaded gasoline began the long decline, that would result it in being banned in the U.S. The death of leaded fuel in the U.S, ultimately took another 60 years.
The toxic effects of leaded gasoline includeddamage to the nervous system, learning impairments and behavioral problems. Those affects were felt by children growing up in the leaded gasoline era, today's baby boomers and ther parents.
Gasoline Rationing - Gasoline Wars - Gasoline Alternatives
Gasoline Hoarding - Gasoline Gouging
The Dark Side Of Gasoline Is Oil
