Herman Frasch

He was the son of Johannes and Frieda Henrietta (Bauer) Frasch. Both his parents were natives of Stuttgart. His father was burgomaster of Gaildorf. Herman attended the Latin school in Gaildorf and was then apprenticed to a bookseller in nearby Schwäbisch Hall.[1]^:47-53 At the age of 16 or 19, he left the apprenticeship and sailed from Bremen to New York, then took the train to Philadelphia.[1]^:47-53 After his arrival in the United States, he became a lab assistant to John Michael Maisch at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.[2]^:41

In 1875, Frasch invented a recovery process for tin scrap and process to make white lead from galena. He patented a process for refining paraffin wax in 1876, and sold the patent to Standard Oil, for whom he became a consulting chemist based in Cleveland.[2]^:41-42

In 1884, Frasch sold the exclusive use of his fractional distillation patent, which was more efficient at separating oil into by-products to Imperial Oil.[3] Imperial then hired Frasch to assist them in retrofitting their Silver Star refinery with his refining process.[3] Imperial offered Frasch a fee of $10,000, but he persuaded the company to provide him with a salary that matched the President of Imperial Oil, Frederick A. Fitzgerald.[3] Once Frasch's completed his work on the refinery in February 1885, he resigned and joined Imperial board member John Minhinnick in founding the Empire Oil Company.[4] The partners purchased a refinery in London, and Frasch began experimenting on a way to remove the sulphur in kerosene refined from Petrolia oil.[5] The oil fields in Lambton County had a high sulphur content, resulting in the kerosene producing excessive smoke and a pungent smell when burned.[6] Canadians nicknamed the kerosene "skunk oil," and refiners had a difficult time marketing their products at home and abroad.[6] Between 1885 and 1887 Frasch determined that mixing copper oxide during the distillation process removed the sulphur content from the oil.[4]

Around the same time as Frasch's discovery, Standard Oil began expanding into Lima, Ohio, and discovered that its oil, like Lambton County's, had a high sulphur content.[7] Recognizing that any improvement in the Canadian oil could also be applied to the Ohio oil, Standard hired Frasch in July 1886, offering him "a salary higher than that of any other scientist in the country," and an exchange of his shares in the Empire Oil Company for Standard Oil shares.[8] Once Frasch returned to the United States, he began working for the Solar Refining Company, a Standard Oil subsidiary in Lima, Ohio, and perfected his desulphurization method.[8] Standard Oil held a patent monopoly on the desulphurization method until 1905, making its investments into the Lima oilfields extremely profitable for the company.[9] Frasch became independently wealthy when he sold half his Standard stock after the price rose from $168 to $820 per share, while the dividend on the stock he retained increased from 7 to 40 percent.[2]^:41-42

During the search for oil in Louisiana, near the present-day city of Sulphur, sulfur was found below a layer of quicksand. All attempts to get to the sulfur with conventional mining shafts ended in disaster. Herman Frasch drilled three dry holes nearby, but the sulfur was not on his property. Frasch concluded the sulfur was associated with a dome structure located on an island owned by the American Sulphur Company. On 20 Oct. 1890, he took out three patents for his Frasch Process. Frasch, and his business associates Frank Rockefeller and F.B. Squire, then entered into a 50-50 agreement with American Sulphur Company to form a new corporation called Union Sulphur Company.[2]

In 1894, Frasch started drilling well No. 14 using a 10 inch pipe, finally getting through the quicksand to the caprock after three months. He then drilled an 8 inch bore to the bottom of the sulphur deposit. A strainer, consisting of perforated 6 inch casing, was placed at the bottom of the 623 feet long test tube. Above the strainer were larger holes acting as the hot water outlet. A 3 inch pipe inside the 6 inch casing descended to the strainer, and was connected to a sucker rod pump. Water, from the surrounding swamp, was heated in a 20 feet high cylinder 30 inches in diameter, from steam supplied by 4 boilers. The superheated water was poured into the well for 24 hours, and on Christmas Day, melted sulphur was pumped to the surface filling 40 barrels in 15 minutes. The excess was then directed to a levee, where it solidified. As Frasch himself said about the first demonstration of the first Frasch Process, "We had melted the mineral in the ground and brought it to the surface as liquid."[2]^:40-49

Frasch then eliminated the pump, by using air lift via compressed air. Bubbles form from the air, making the sulphur less dense than the surrounding water, thus raising the aerated column. Costs were also reduced by replacing wood and coal with oil. Then in 1911, he introduced bleed pumps to draw off excess cold water.[2]^:53,61,96-97

In 1908, Frasch entered into an agreement with the Italian Government dividing the world market outside the U.S., where Union Sulphur Co. was guaranteed one-third. His costs were one-fifth that of Sicilian Sulphur mined in Caltanissetta. That agreement ended in 1912. Once his original patents expired, Frasch was unsuccessful in blocking Freeport Sulphur Company from using his process.[2]^{:67-68,71-73,82}