Borneo petroleum

Chavanne (11) in 1922, relating to various hydrocarbons present in,the gasoline fraction of a Borneo petroleum... 

Some features of the British method which was developed during the 1914 1918 period are worth mentioning. One of them was the use of toluene derived from petroleum (Borneo petroleum), as well as toluene from coal. 

The composition of the xylene obtained by distillation of Borneo petroleum is much the same as that of the xylene from coal. 

Continental expertise was also drawn upon to build the smaller raw materials plants, which were also critical to production. In early 1915, a distillation plant owned by Shell, which was capable of producing toluene from Borneo petroleum, was brought from Rotterdam and re-erected at Portishead, near Bristol. Soon afterwards, an almost identical plant was constructed at Barrow-in-Fumess in Cumbria. During the war, these two factories produced almost the same amount of toluene as the entire British coal-gas industry. Under Shell s chief engineer, W.R. Aveline, company chemists, who included Dutch citizens, also assisted in the construction of the nitration and TNT plants at Oldbury and Queensferry. ... 

The principal source of aromatic compounds is coal tar, produced as a by-product in the manufacture of coke. Gas tar, of which much smaller quantities are produced, also contains these same materials. Aromatic hydrocarbons occur in nature in Borneo and other petroleums, and they may be prepared artificially by stripping hydrogen atoms from the cycloparaffins which occur in Caucasus petroleum and elsewhere. They are also produced from paraffin hydrocarbons by certain processes of cracking, and it is to be expected that in the future aromatic compounds will be produced in increasing quantity from petroleum which does not contain them in its natural state. 

These and many other aromatics have been isolated from petroleum fractions. The aromatic content of crude oils can vary widely, but an aromatic content of a third or more of the total, as has been noted for some Borneo crudes, is not unusual [5]. The density (or °API) of a crude oil is an indicator of the aromatic content since the high C H ratio of aromatic components tends to make these the most dense constituents present. This is particularly true with polynuclear aromatic constituents since each additional ring further reduces the hydrogen count by two, increasing the already high C H ratio and therefore also the density. 

When the so-called fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum are used a large amount of carbon dioxide is released, resulting in an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As carbon dioxide is a gas with an influence on the greenhouse effect, its increase in the atmosphere results in the raising of the temperature on the surface of Earth. Therefore the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should be curtailed. It is usually thought that most carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is consumed by plants on the land. Of course this idea is not incorrect the tropical rain forests of the Amazonian area, Kalimantan (Borneo) and some other areas consume much of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, it should be kept in mind that the consumption of the gas by algae and cyanobacteria in the ocean is also sizable. Some researchers say that 70% of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is consumed by the photosynthesis of algae and cyanobacteria in the oceans. 

Jones, H.O. and H.A. Wootton, The Chemical Composition of Petroleum from Borneo , Journal of the Chemical Society. Transactions, 91 (2), (1907), 1146-1149. 

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