Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

420 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45)
Of fundamental importance was the wartime work of the petroleum
laboratory, originally set up in the summer of 1937 with the support of
the Army Air Corps, Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, and NACA to synthesize,
if possible, an improved aviation fuel. With the war the investigation
turned to study of the paraffin hydrocarbons, found as impurities in primary
standard reference aviation fuels, and investigation of those of superior
value as components of military aviation gasoline. Working with data and
samples provided by the American Petroleum Institute, the Bureau laboratory
isolated and synthesized some 78 hydrocarbons and prepared 66 of them in
a higher purity than ever before.'51 In the case of 21 of the hydrocarbons,
no evidence could be found in the literature to indicate they had ever been
made before. An added result of the project was the discovery of a possible
method for augmenting the supply of aviation gasoline, using re.formed
cracked naphtha. Of considerable interest to NACA and the American Pe-
troleum Institute, it became the subject of continued postwar research)-"2
When the early losses of oil tankers by enemy action imperiled the
supply of vehicle fuels to our Allies, the Bureau was asked to find out whether
substitute fuels from vegetable matter, which the Allies might produce locally,
were possible. Attempts to run cars and trucks on gas substitutes was an old
story, but the Bureau looked into it again. The studies of engine perform-
ance with alcohol, charcoal, shale oil, naphtha, vegetable products and other
known substitutes all pointed to - alcohol as most promising. Engine tests
using gas produced from charcoal showed that approximately 11 pounds of
charcoal produced energy equal to a gallon of gas. But the fact that it took
2 minutes to start up the engine and that the little gas generator required
i"' C461, "Selected values of properties of hydrocarbons" (1947); NBS Annual Report
1948, p. 217.
Bureau studies in the chemistry of petroleum oils went back to World War I (see ch.
V, pp. 276—277), and cooperative research with the API in the separation of petroleum
into its constituent hydrocarbons began in 1928.
The practical problem in the twenties was engine knocking, as compression ratios in-
creased. An octane number scale for expressing the knock rating of motor gasolines
was adopted in 1930, with n-heptane for the low and isooctane for the high, and in
1934 the Bureau was asked to set up specifications for these primary standard reference
motor fuels. Since that time the Bureau has maintained these national reference stand-
ards, on which all octane number measurements throughout the country are based. In
1.946 the octane scale was also applied to aviation gasolines.
In the course of its preparation of pure samples, the Bureau found among the aliphatic
hydrocarbons several with higher octane numbers than any previously known—the
components of later aviation fuels. See RP1027, "Paraffin hydrocarbons isolated from
crude synthetic isooctane * * (Brooks, Cleaton, and Carter, 1937) ; RPJ16O, "Prop-
erties of purified normal heptane and isooctane * (Brooks, 1938).
NBS Report 274.6, "Hydrocarbon synthesis at the NBS, 1937—1953" (Howard, ed.,
1953); NBS War Research, pp. 75—78; interview with Thomas W. Mears, Apr. 14,
1964.