William M. Burton

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William Merriam Burton (born November 17, 1865 in Cleveland , Ohio , † December 29, 1954 in Miami ) was an American chemist. He developed the first commercially successful thermal cracking process in petroleum refining in the USA.

Burton graduated from Western Reserve University with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1886 and received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1889 . He worked for Standard Oil from 1890, first in their refinery in Whiting (Indiana) and from 1918 as President until his retirement in 1927.

His cracking process (Burton process) broken down the long-chain hydrocarbons in crude oil under high pressure and temperature into shorter chains, was patented in 1913 and doubled the gasoline yield from crude oil, just in time to avoid bottlenecks in the First World War. Even before that, however, a cracking process was developed in Russia in 1891 by Vladimir Grigoryevich Schuchow .

In 1918 he received the Willard Gibbs Medal . He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame .

source

  • Article in Encyclopedia Britannica (Online)