Gasoline Products Co. v. Champlin Refining Co., 1336.

• Decision Date: 18 November 1936
• Docket Number: No. 1336.,1336.
• Citation: 86 F.2d 552
• Parties: GASOLINE PRODUCTS CO., Inc., v. CHAMPLIN REFINING CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

86 F.2d 552 (1936)

GASOLINE PRODUCTS CO., Inc., v. CHAMPLIN REFINING CO.

No. 1336.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

November 18, 1936.

Ramsay Hoguet and Drury W. Cooper, both of New York City (Brady Cole, of Houston, Tex., John B. Marsh, of New York City, and E. R. Wright, of Santa Fe, N. M., on the brief), for appellant.

J. Bernhard Thiess and Thorley von Holst, both of Chicago, Ill. (Arthur C. Denison, of Cleveland, Ohio, Earle W. Evans, of Wichita, Kan., Nathan Scarritt, of Enid, Okl., and Carl H. Gilbert, of Santa Fe, N. M., on the brief), for appellee.

Before PHILLIPS and McDERMOTT, Circuit Judges, and KENNEDY, District Judge.

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge.

Gasoline Products Company brought this suit against Champlin Refining Company to enjoin the infringement of three patents and for an accounting.

The patents involved are: Rosenbaum, No. 1,324,983, issued December 16, 1919, all the claims of which are in suit; Cross, No. 1,734,079, applied for February 16, 1925, and issued November 5, 1929, claims 4 and 5 of which are in suit; and Howard and Loomis, No. 1,869,337, applied for May 23, 1921, and issued July 26, 1932, claims 7 to 11 inclusive of which are in suit.

From a decree holding the Rosenbaum, patent invalid and not infringed, the Cross patent invalid and not infringed and the Howard and Loomis patent not infringed, Products Company has appealed.

In their briefs, counsel for Products Company have abandoned their appeal as to the Rosenbaum patent and further reference will not be made thereto.

The Products Company, a Delaware corporation, is a patent owning and licensing company. The Champlin Company, a New Mexico corporation, is engaged in refining petroleum at Enid, Oklahoma.

The Howard & Loomis patent is for a process for treating heavy crude oil. The Cross patent is for a furnace for heating liquids and gases, including hydrocarbon oils.

Petroleum in its natural state is made up of many combinations of hydrogen and carbon. These various combinations are classified according to relative density or boiling point. Distillation involves the mere physical separation of these various compounds and results in no chemical reaction. Cracking involves the decomposition of these complex hydrocarbon molecules of petroleum and converts them into incondensable gases, gasoline, kerosene, gas oil, fuel oil, lubricating oil, greases, tar and asphalt. This chemical reaction or cracking is produced by the application of intense heat for a sufficient length of time to break up the molecules. Time and temperature are the basic factors in any oil cracking process. Cracking commences at a temperature of about 700 degrees Fahrenheit. With each twenty degrees rise in temperature above the minimum cracking temperature, the speed of cracking approximately doubles. For example, oil will crack about 32 times faster at 900 degrees than it will at 800 degrees. In other words, increasing the temperature factor decreases the time factor.

The process of cracking had been known to the art for many years prior to the respective dates on which the applications for the patents in suit were filed. In 1860, Atwood secured a patent for the cracking of oil. At that time the primary object was to obtain kerosene. Subsequently thereto, considerable cracking for kerosene was carried on in Pennsylvania. The first real contribution to the art of cracking for gasoline was made by Burton in 1912. Since then many improvements have been made and many patents on cracking processes have issued.

Early in the history of the cracking art two methods of cracking were developed. One in which the oil was cracked in the liquid state, which became known as the liquid phase; and the other in which it was cracked in the vapor state, which became known as the vapor phase. The liquid phase involves the raising of the temperature of the oil while under pressure. By applying pressure the boiling points of the lighter hydrocarbons in the oil are raised above the cracking temperature of 700 degrees and since pressure does not affect the cracking temperature, the oil cracks in the liquid state. Burton applied pressure and cracked the oil in the liquid state. The gasoline produced by cracking in the liquid state was water white and sweet smelling. It resembled the gasoline recovered from the oil by distillation and found favor with the buying public. Gasoline produced from cracking in the vapor state was foul smelling and yellow in color; and it was difficult to refine and did not sell readily. More recently there has developed a variant of the vapor phase process known as the liquid-vapor phase in which the oil is cracked in both phases in the same process. The vapor and liquid-vapor phase processes were used by the Texas Company at Bayonne, New Jersey, as early as 1916. Vapor phase operations were also conducted by Rittman at Oil City, Pennsylvania, as early as 1915. The gasoline produced by the liquid vapor and vapor phase processes is high in anti-knock qualities and with the advent of the high compression automobile it immediately found favor.

In the early days cracking was dangerous and many persons were killed in the commercial operation of the various cracking processes because of explosions and fires. The chief difficulty encountered was the formation of carbon when cracking took place. All processes could crack oil one way or another and could produce the lighter and more volatile hydrocarbons, but the problem was to do it continuously or at least for a sufficient period of time to make the operation a success financially, and to do it in such a way as to avoid dangerous conditions likely to result in destructive fires or explosions. Since carbon formation was a major problem in cracking, there was a constant struggle by those who developed the art to eliminate carbon deposits.

Champlin Company's Process and Device

The Champlin Company in its refining operations, employs Winkler-Koch cracking stills. Two were installed in 1929 and a third in 1931.

The device and the process employed by Champlin Company are illustrated by the following drawing.

Each still consists of a low pressure and a high pressure furnace, a vapor separator, a bubble tower, a pressure distillate condenser, a gas separator, two coolers, connecting pipe and several pumps.

The device and process are utilized to secure a clean charging stock from a reduced crude by fractional distillation, to crack this clean charging stock and to segregate the products of such cracking by fractionation.

The process employed is as follows:

Reduced crude is pumped by means of a pump labeled "topped crude pump" through a preheating coil in the bubble tower and then to the lowest bank of coils in the low pressure furnace. This preheater coil in the bubble tower serves two purposes. The cold topped crude is heated by the hot vapors rising in the bubble tower and the vapors are cooled causing the fractions with lower boiling points in such vapors to condense and fall back. While passing through this heat exchanger, the temperature of the topped crude is raised to about 500 degrees. After passing through the low pressure furnace it is discharged therefrom at a temperature of 640 degrees into a transfer line which connects the high pressure or cracking heater with the vapor separator. At that point it comes in contact with the stream of products, from the cracking heater, which has a temperature of about 920 degrees. The two streams combine and are discharged into the lower part of the vapor separator at a temperature of 795 degrees.

The pressure in the vapor separator is considerably lower than in the furnaces and the lighter constituents rise to the top of the separator and pass through the vapor line to the bubble tower while the heavier constituents, such as tar and fuel oil, are drawn off at the bottom of the separator, cooled and sent to storage.

After the vapors from the separator enter the bubble tower a further separation takes place. The pressure distillate rises to the top and goes through a pressure distillate condenser and into a gas separator where the incondensable gas is separated from the desired pressure distillate which is drawn off. The condensed gas oil from the reduced crude which has passed through the low pressure furnace and vapor separator and the condensed vapors of the insufficiently cracked material drop to the bottom of the bubble tower where they are drawn off and by means of a pump forced through the high pressure or cracking furnace. The charging stock is also supplemented by gas oil pumped into the bubble tower from an outside source. The insufficiently cracked material constitutes about 58 per cent of the charge that goes to the high pressure furnace.

The cracking furnace has a combustion chamber, a bridge wall, a heating chamber and several banks of tubes through which the oil travels. The fire is in the combustion chamber. The products of combustion from the fire pass over the bridge wall, down through the various banks of tubes, under the furnace and out the chimney. The bank of tubes just under the roof of the furnace is known as the roof bank and is heated by radiant heat. The tubes behind the bridge wall are heated by convection heat or, in other words, by coming in contact with the hot products of combustion passing over the bridge wall, down and out the chimney. These products of combustion are hottest at the top of the bridge wall and become cooler as they pass down through the several tube banks because heat is being absorbed by such banks. The lowest bank is the coolest and is known as the preheater or heat economizer bank.

The clean charging stock or gas oil taken from the bubble tower enters the preheater bank and the temperature is raised from about 580 degrees to 665 degrees. From there it enters a transfer tube and goes to the top or convection bank where the temperature is raised to 740 degrees. From there it goes to the lower row...