Berl: Protoproduct

Growing our own gas may be the answer to the problems posed by the demands of war and increasing industrial and personal needs. Startling results have been achieved by Dr. E. Berl, a research professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, from his experiments in converting plants into gasoline, coal, and other hydrocarbons. By carefully controlled internal combustion, plant material such as sugar cane, wood, sorghum, potatoes, cornstalks, or even grass, is transformed into a substance known as ‘protoproduct’.

A gummy semiliquid at ordinary temperatures, this protoproduct is itself a highly efficient fuel. Hydrogenation converts it in turn into gasoline, kerosene, or lubricating oil. Or by another process it can be changed into coal that is said to be in some respects superior to natural coal. If Dr Berl’s method proves practical on a commercial scale, it may be of world-changing importance, for vast agricultural areas might easily produce their own fuel for industrial power.

To the American Chemical Society convened in Detroit last week, Professor Ernst Berl of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute for Technology made an astonishing announcement. He said he had made, experimentally but successfully, oil, coal, coke and asphalt from grass, leaves, seaweed, sawdust, scrap lumber, corn, cornstalks, cotton.

The earth’s supplies of coal and oil were laid in, once for all, during the Carboniferous Age, 200 to 300 million years ago. Using them is like spending capital. But using coal and oil made from plants would be like spending income, since plants grow prodigally and all the time.

One difference between wood and oil is that wood is mostly carbohydrates (composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) whereas oil is mostly hydrocarbons (composed of carbon and hydrogen only). Chemically these two great classes of compounds behave very differently. But economically the really important difference between wood and oil is that wood-burning locomotives are obsolete, whereas oil-burning Diesel trains are the height of modernity.

Apparently, converting the carbohydrate vegetable matter into hydrocarbons is the most ticklish part of Dr. Berl’s process, and he did not talk about it too freely. He heats the carbohydrate under pressure with limestone and “similar substances.” Probably one or more catalysts (chemical activators) are involved. The time required is only one hour — considerably less than the millions of years that nature needed. The New York Herald Tribune gulped with excitement: “What the Wrights did to distance, he [Professor Berl] has done to geologic time. One’s imagination gags at the possibilities.”

Dr. Berl did not say how much or what fuel would be needed to run his fuel factory (if coal or oil were used, the amount consumed would certainly have to be less than the amount manufactured). He did say that, with natural coal and oil still plentiful and prices low, the cost would be too high to undertake commercially now. But he believes the chemist’s job is to be ready for future shortages.