Chapter 3

The pumping stations are substantial structures of brick, roofed with iron. The boiler house is removed some distance from the engine house for greater safety from fire; the building, about 40 by 50 feet, contains from six to seven tubular boilers, each 5 by 14 feet, and containing 80 three-inch tubes. The pump house is a similar brick structure about 40 by 60 feet, and contains the battery of pumping engines to be described later. At each station are two iron tanks, 90 feet in diameter and 30 feet high; into these tanks the oil is delivered from the preceding station, and from them the oil is pumped into the tanks at the next station beyond. The pipe-system at each station is simple, and by means of the "loop-lines" before mentioned the oil can be pumped directly around any station if occasion would require it.

The pumps used on all these lines are the Worthington compound, condensing, pressure pumping engines. The general characteristics of these pumps are, independent plungers with exterior packing, valve-boxes subdivided into separate small chambers capable of resisting very heavy strains, and leather-faced metallic valves with low lift and large surfaces. These engines vary in power from 200 to 800 horse-power, according to duty required. They are in continuous use, day and night, and are required to deliver about 15,000 barrels of crude oil per 24 hours, under a pressure equivalent to an elevation of 3,500 feet.

We have lately examined the latest pumping engine plant, and the largest yet built for this service, by the firm of H.R. Worthington; it is to be used at the Osborne Hollow Pumping Station. As patents are yet pending on certain new features in this engine, we must defer a full description of it for a later issue of our journal.

The Pennsylvania line has a single 6-inch pipe 280 miles long, with six pumping stations as shown in the map, and groups of shorter lines, with a loop extending from the main line to Milton, Pa., a shipping point for loading on cars. At Millway, Pa., a 5-inch pipe leaves the Pennsylvania line and runs to Baltimore, a distance of 70 miles, and is operated from the first named station alone, there being no intermediate pumping station.[1] The Cleveland pipe, 100 miles long, is 5 inches in diameter, and has upon it four pumping stations; it carries oil to the very extensive refineries of the company at the terminal on Lake Erie. The Buffalo line is 4 inches in diameter and 70 miles long; it has a pumping station at Four-Mile and at Ashford (omitted on the map). The Pittsburg line is 4 inches in diameter and 60 miles long; it has pumping stations at Carbon Center and at Freeport.

[Footnote 1: Millway is about 400 feet above tide-water at Baltimore, but the line passes over a very undulating country in its passage to the last named point. We regret that we have no profile on this 70 mile line operated by a single pumping plant.--_Ed. Engineering News_.]

A very necessary and remarkably complete adjunct to the numerous pipe lines of this company is an independent telegraph system extending to every point on its widely diverging lines. The storage capacity of the National Transit Co.'s system is placed at 1,500,000 barrels, and this tankage is being constantly increased to meet the demands of the producers.[1]

[Footnote 1: As showing the extent of the sea-coast transportation of petroleum, we should mention that the statistics for 1884 show a total of crude equivalent exported from the United States in that year, equaling 16,661,086 barrels, of 51 gallons each. This is a daily average of 42,780 barrels.]

The company is officially organized as follows: C.A. Griscom, President; Benjamin Brewster, Vice President; John Bushnell, Secretary; Daniel O'Day, General Manager; J.H. Snow, General Superintendent. Mr. Snow was the practical constructor of the entire system, and the general perfection of the work is mainly due to his personal experience, energy, and careful supervision. His engineering assistants were Theodore M. Towe and C.J. Hepburn on the New York line and J.B. Barbour on the Pennsylvania lines.

The enterprise has been so far a great engineering success, and the oil delivery is stated on good authority to be within 2 per cent. of the theoretical capacity of the pipes. From a commercial standpoint, the ultimate future of the undertaking will be determined by the lasting qualities of wrought iron pipe buried in the ground and subjected to enormous strain; time alone can determine this question.

In preparing this article we are indebted for information to the firm of H.R. Worthington, to General Manager O'Day, of the National Transit Co., to the editor of the _Derrick_ of Oil City, Pa., and to numerous engineering friends.--_Engineering News_.

* * * * *

THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE.

By GEORGE WARDMAN.

The practical application of natural gas, as an article of fuel, to the purpose of manufacturing glass, iron, and steel, promises to work a revolution in the industrial interests of America--promises to work a revolution; for notwithstanding the fact that, in many of the largest iron, steel, and glass factories in Pittsburg and its vicinity, natural gas has already been substituted for coal, the managers of some such works are shy of the new fuel, mainly for two reasons: 1. They doubt the continuity and regularity of its supply. 2. They do not deem the difference between the price of natural gas and coal sufficient as yet to justify the expenditure involved in the furnace changes necessary to the substitution of the one for the other. These two objections will doubtless disappear with additional experience in the production and regulation of the gas supply, and with enlarged competition among the companies engaging in its transmission from the wells to the works. At present the use of natural gas as a substitute for coal in the manufacture of glass, iron, and steel is in its infancy.

Natural gas is as ancient as the universe. It was known to man in prehistoric times, we must suppose, for the very earliest historical reference to the Magi of Asia records them as worshiping the eternal fires which then blazed, and still blaze, in the fissures of the mountain heights overlooking the Caspian Sea. Those records appertain to a period at least 600 years before the birth of Christ; but the Magi must have lived and worshiped long anterior to that time.

Zoroaster, reputed founder of the Parsee sect, is placed contemporary with the prophet Daniel, from 2,500 to 600 B.C.; and, although Daniel has been doubted, and Zoroaster may never have seen the light, the fissures of the Caucasus have been flaming since the earliest authentic records.

The Parsees (Persians) did not originally worship fire. They believed in two great powers--the Spirit of Light, or Good, and the Spirit of Darkness, or Evil. Subsequent to Zoroaster, when the Persian empire rose to its greatest power and importance, overspreading the west to the shores of the Caspian and beyond, the tribes of the Caucasus suffered political subjugation; but the creed of the Magi, founded upon the eternal flame-altars of the mountains, proved sufficiently vigorous to transform the Parseeism of the conquerors to the fire worship of the conquered.

About the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era, the Grecian Emperor Heraclius overturned the fire altars of the Magi at Baku, the chief city on the Caspian, but the fire worshipers were not expelled from the Caucasus until the Mohammedans subjugated the Persian Empire, when they were driven into the Rangoon, on the Irrawaddy, in India, one of the most noted petroleum producing districts of the world.

Petroleum and natural gas are so intimately related that one would hardly dare to say whether the gas proceeds from petroleum or the petroleum is deposited from the gas. It is, however, safe to assume that they are the products of one material, the lighter element separating from the heavier under certain degrees of temperature and pressure. Thus petroleum may separate from the gas as asphaltum separates from petroleum. But some speculative minds consider natural gas to be a product of anthracite coal. The fact that the great supply-field of natural gas in Western Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, and Eastern Ohio is a bituminous and not an anthracite region does not of itself confute that theory, as the argument for it is, that the gas may be tapped at a remote distance from the source of supply; and, whereas anthracite is not a gas-coal, while bituminous is, we are told to suppose that the gas which once may have been a component part of the anthracite was long ago expelled by Nature, and has since been held in vast reservoirs with slight waste, awaiting the use of man. That is one theory; and upon that supposition it is suggested that anthracite may exist below the bituminous beds of the region lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Great Lakes. Another theory is, that natural gas is a product of the sea-weed deposited in the Devonian stratum. But, leaving modern theories on the origin of natural gas and petroleum, we may suppose the natural gas jets now burning in the fissures of the Caucasus to have started up in flames about the time when, according to the Old Testament, Noah descended from Mount Ararat, or very soon thereafter. In the language of modern science it would be safe to say that those flames sprang up when the Caucasus range was raised from beneath the surface of the universal sea. The believer in biblical chronology may say that those fires have been burning for four thousand years--the geologist may say for four millions.

We know that Alexander the Great penetrated to the Caspian; and in Plutarch we read: "Hence [Arbela] he marched through the province Babylon [Media?], which immediately submitted to him, and in Ecbatana [?] was much surprised at the sight of the place where fire issues in a continuous stream, like a spring of water, out of a cleft in the earth, and the stream of naphtha, which not far from this spot flows out so abundantly as to form a large lake. This naphtha, in other respects resembling bitumen, is so subject to take fire that, before it touches the flame, it will kindle at the very light that surrounds it, and often inflames the intermediate air also. The barbarians, to show the power and nature of it, sprinkled the street that led to the king's lodgings with little drops of it, and, when it was almost night, stood at the farther end with torches, which being applied to the moistened places, the first taking fire, instantly, as quick as a man could think of it, it caught from one end to another in such manner that the whole street was one continued flame. Among those who used to wait upon the king, and find occasion to amuse him, when he anointed and washed himself, there was one Athenophanus, an Athenian, who desired him to make an experiment of the naphtha upon Stephanus, who stood by in the bathing place, a youth with a ridiculously ugly face, whose talent was singing well. 'For,' said he, 'if it take hold of him, and is not put out, it must undeniably be allowed to be of the most invincible strength.' The youth, as it happened, readily consented to undergo the trial, and as soon as he was anointed and rubbed with it, his whole body was broke out into such a flame, and was so seized by the fire, that Alexander was in the greatest perplexity and alarm for him, and not without reason; for nothing could have prevented him from being consumed by it if, by good chance, there had not been people at hand with a great many vessels of water for the service of the bath, with all which they had much ado to extinguish the fire; and his body was so burned all over that he was not cured of it a good while after. And thus it was not without some plausibility that they endeavor to reconcile the fable to truth, who say this was the drug in the tragedies with which Medea anointed the crown and veils which she gave to Creon's daughter."

An interesting reference to the fire-worshipers of the Caucasus is contained in the "History of Zobeide," a tale of the wonderful Arabian Nights Entertainment. It runs thus:

"I bought a ship at Balsora, and freighted it; my sisters chose to go with me, and we set sail with a fair wind. Some weeks after, we cast anchor in a harbor which presented itself, with intent to water the ship. As I was tired with having been so long on board, I landed with the first boat, and walked up into the country. I soon came in sight of a great town. When I arrived there, I was much surprised to see vast numbers of people in different postures, but all immovable. The merchants were in their shops, the soldiery on guard; every one seemed engaged in his proper avocation, yet all were become as stone.... I heard the voice of a man reading Al Koran.... Being curious to know why he was the only living creature in the town,... he proceeded to tell me that the city was the metropolis of a kingdom now governed by his father; that the former king and all his subjects were Magi, worshipers of fire and of Nardoun. the ancient king of the giants who rebelled against God. 'Though I was born,' continued he, 'of idolatrous parents, it was my good fortune to have a woman governess who was a strict observer of the Mohammedan religion. She taught me Arabic from Al Koran; by her I was instructed in the true religion, which I would never afterward renounce. About three years ago a thundering voice was heard distinctly throughout the city, saying, "Inhabitants, abandon the worship of Nardoun and of fire, and worship the only true God, who showeth mercy!" This voice was heard three years successively, but no one regarded it. At the end of the last year all the inhabitants were in an instant turned to stone. I alone was preserved.'"

In the foregoing tale we doubtless have reference to the destruction of Baku, on the Caspian (though to sail from Balsora to Baku is impossible), and the driving away into India, by the Arabs under Caliph Omar, of all who refused to renounce fire-worship and adopt the creed of the Koran. The turning of the refractory inhabitants into stone is probably the Arabian storyteller's figurative manner of referring to the finding of dead bodies in a mummified condition.

It is known that the Egyptians made use of bitumen, in some form, in the preservation of their dead, a fact with which the Arabians were familiar. As the Magi held the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water to be sacred, they feared to either bury, burn, sink, or expose to air the corrupting bodies of their deceased. Therefore, it was their practice to envelop the corpse in a coating of wax or bitumen, so as to hermetically seal it from immediate contact with either of the four sacred elements. Hence the idea of all the bodies of the Magi left at Baku being turned to stone, while only the true believer in Mohammed remained in the flesh.

Marco Polo, the famous traveler of the thirteenth century, makes reference to the burning jets of the Caucasus, and those fires are known to the Russians as continuing in existence since the army of Peter the Great wrested the regions about the Caspian from the modern Persians. The record of those flaming jets of natural gas is thus brought down in an unbroken chain of evidence from remote antiquity to the present day, and they are still burning.

Numerous Greek and Latin writers testify to the known existence of petroleum about the shores of the Mediterranean two thousand years ago. More modern citations may, however, be read with equal interest. In the "Journal of Sir Philip Skippon's Travels in France," in 1663, we find the following curious entries:

"We stayed in Grenoble till August 1st, and one day rode out, and, after twice fording the river Drac (which makes a great wash) at a league's distance, went over to Pont de Clef, a large arch across that river, where we paid one sol a man; a league further we passed through a large village called Vif, and about a league thence by S. Bathomew, another village, and Chasteau Bernard, where we saw a flame breaking out of the side of a bank, which is vulgarly called La Fountaine qui Brule; it is by a small rivulet, and sometimes breaks out in other places; just before our coming some other strangers had fried eggs here. The soil hereabouts is full of a black stone, like our coal, which, perhaps, is the continual fuel of the fire.... Near Peroul, about a league from Montpelier, we saw a boiling fountain (as they call it), that is, the water did heave up and bubble as if it boiled. This phenomenon in the water was caused by a vapor ascending out of the earth through the water, as was manifest, for if that one did but dig anywhere near the place, and pour water upon the place new digged, one should observe in it the like bubbling, the vapor arising not only in that place where the fountain was, but all thereabout; the like vapor ascending out of the earth and causing such ebullition in water it passes through hath been observed in Mr. Hawkley's ground, about a mile from the town of Wigan, in Lancashire, which vapor, by the application of a lighted candle, paper; or the like, catches fire and flames vigorously. Whether or not this vapor at Peroul would in like manner catch fire and burn I cannot say, it coming not in our minds to make the experiment.... At Gabian, about a day's journey from Montpelier, in the way to Beziers, is a fountain of petroleum. It burns like oil, is of a pungent scent, and a blackish color. It distills out of several places of the rock all the year long, but most in the summer time. They gather it up with ladles and put it in a barrel set on end, which hath a spigot just at the bottom. When they have put in a good quantity, they open the spigot to let out the water, and when the oil begins to come presently stop it. They pay for the farm of this fountain about fifty crowns per annum. We were told by one Monsieur Beaushoste, a chymist in Montpelier, that petroleum was the very same with oil of jet, and not to be distinguished from it by color, taste, smell, consistency, virtues, or any other accident, as he had by experience found upon the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in several places, as at Berre, near Martague, in Provence; at Messina, in Sicily, etc."

In Harris' "Voyages," published in 1764, an article on the empire of Persia thus refers to petroleum:

"In several parts of Persia we meet with naphtha, both white and black; it is used in painting and varnish, and sometimes in physic, and there is an oil extracted from it which is applied to several uses. The most famous springs of naphtha are in the neighborhood of Baku, which furnish vast quantities, and there are also upward of thirty springs about Shamasky, both in the province of Schirwan. The Persians use it as oil for their lamps and in making fireworks, of which they are extremely fond, and in which they are great proficients."

Petroleum has long been known to exist also in the northern part of Italy, the cities of Parma and Genoa having been for many years lighted with it.

In the province of Szechuen, China, natural gas is obtained from beds of rock-salt at a depth of fifteen to sixteen hundred feet. Being brought to the surface, it is conveyed in bamboo tubes and used for lighting as well as for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt. It is asserted that the Chinese used this natural gas for illuminating purposes long before gas-lighting was known to the Europeans. Remembering the unprogressive character of Chinese arts and industries, there is ground for the belief that they may have been using this natural gas as an illuminant these hundreds of years.

In the United States the existence of petroleum was known to the Pilgrim Fathers, who doubtless obtained their first information of it from the Indians, from whom, in New York and western Pennsylvania, it was called Seneka oil. It was otherwise known as "British" oil and oil of naphtha, and was considered "a sovereign remedy for an inward bruise."

The record of natural gas in this country is not so complete as that of petroleum, but we learn that an important gas spring was known in West Bloomfleld, N.Y., seventy years ago. In 1864 a well was sunk to a depth of three hundred feet upon that vein, from which a sufficient supply of gas was obtained to illuminate and heat the city of Rochester (twenty-five miles distant), it was supposed. But the pipes which were laid for that purpose, being of wood, were unfitted to withstand the pressure, in consequence of which the scheme was abandoned; but gas from that well is now in use as an illuminant and as fuel both in the town of West Bloomfield and at Honeoye Falls. The village of Fredonia, N.Y., has been using natural gas in lighting the streets for thirty years or there about. On Big Sewickley Creek, in Westmoreland County, Pa., natural gas was used for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt thirty years ago, and gas is still issuing at the same place. Natural gas has been in use in several localities in eastern Ohio for twenty-five years, and the wells are flowing as vigorously as when first known. It has also been in use in West Virginia for a quarter of a century, as well as in the petroleum region of western Pennsylvania, where it has long been utilized in generating steam for drilling oil wells.

In 1826 the _American Journal of Science_ contained a letter from Dr. S.P. Hildreth, who, in writing of the products of the Muskingum (Ohio) Valley, said: "They have sunk two wells, which are now more than four hundred feet in depth; one of them affords a very strong and pure salt water, but not in great quantity; the other discharges such vast quantities of petroleum, or, as it is vulgarly called, 'Seneka oil,' and besides is so subject to such tremendous explosions of gas, as to force out all the water and afford nothing but gas for several days, that they make little or no salt."

The value of the foregoing references is to be found in the testimony they offer as to the duration of the supply of natural gas. Whether we look to the eternal flaming fissures of the Caucasus, or to New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, there is much to encourage the belief that the flow of natural gas may be, like the production of petroleum, increased rather than diminished by the draughts made upon it. Petroleum, instead of diminishing in quantity by the millions of barrels drawn from western Pennsylvania in the last quarter of a century, seems to increase, greater wells being known in 1884 than in any previous year, and prices having fallen from two dollars per bottle for "Seneka oil" to sixty cents per barrel for the same article under the name of crude petroleum. Hence we may assume that, as new pipe-lines are laid, the supply of natural gas available for use in the great manufacturing district of Pittsburg and vicinity will be increased, and the price of this fuel diminished in a corresponding ratio.