Historical Use in Vehicles
Some very early internal combustion engines—such as the first types made by Karl Benz, and early Wright brothers aircraft engines—used natural gasoline, which could be either drip gas or a similar range of hydrocarbons distilled from crude oil. Natural gasoline has an octane rating of about 30 to 50, sufficient for the low-compression engines of the early 20th century. By 1930, improved engines and higher compression ratios required higher-octane, refined gasolines to produce power without knocking or detonation.
Beginning in the Great Depression, drip gas was used as a replacement for commercial gasoline by people in oil-producing areas. "In the days of simple engines in automobiles and farm tractors it was not uncommon for anyone having access to a condensate well to fill his tank with 'drip,'" according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. Sometimes it worked fine. "At other times it might cause thundering backfires and clouds of foul-smelling smoke."
Woody Guthrie's autobiographical novel Seeds of Man begins with Woody and his uncle Jeff tapping a natural gas pipeline for drip gas. The gas also has a mention in Badlands, the Terrence Malick movie.
It was sold commercially at gas stations and hardware stores in North America until the early 1950s. The White gas sold today is a similar product but is produced at refineries with the benzene removed.
In 1975, the New Mexico State Police's drip gas detail – three men in pickup trucks – began patrolling oil and gas fields, catching thieves and recovering barrels of stolen gas. The detail stopped its work in 1987.
The use of drip gas in cars and trucks is now illegal in many states. It is also harmful to modern engines due to its low octane rating, high heat of combustion and lack of additives. It has a distinctive smell when used as a fuel, which allowed police to catch people using drip gas illegally.
Read more about this topic: Natural-gas Condensate
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or vehicles:
“We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically determined perceptions and human social needs. For historical reasons, existing societies might have such properties, leading to various forms of pathology.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)