Science: Big Tank

If the 151-ft. Statue of Liberty were laid in a coffin and floated in New York Harbor, it would be lighter and no simpler to maneuver than a timber-lagged steel tank which this week started on a 1,371-mi. trip from Jersey City, N. J. to Whiting, Ind., at the foot of Lake Michigan. There it will be stood on one end, and, towering Soft., will serve as a low pressure evaporator tower for distilling crude oil for Standard Oil Co. of Indiana (“Stanolind”). Construction and delivery of the tank was accompanied by a great shattering of records. It is the biggest oil evaporator tower in existence. Best man to build it, Stanolind found, was Morris W. Kellogg of Jersey City. From Lukens Steel Co. Mr. Kellogg ordered the longest slabs of special steel any fabricator ever turned out for such work. They measured 50-ft. long, 10-ft. wide, 2 5/16-in. thick and were curved to make a cylinder of 15-ft. diameter. Kellogg boilermakers welded them together and X-rayed every inch of welded seam to make sure that the tank would never break down.

To remove invisible internal stresses from the steel, the mammoth tank was rolled into a vast annealing furnace, where oil burners made it red hot. Workmen inched the completed 230-ton tank out of the Kellogg shop and onto two of the ten longest (55-ft.) flatcars in the world. Railroad curves, bridges and tunnels between Jersey City and Whiting did not permit freightage of Stanolind’s tank. So the Lehigh Valley R.R. hauled it two miles to the west bank of the Hudson. All traffic on the railroad had to stop while this went on.

The biggest (250-ton) floating derrick ballasted by 300-ton of water lifted the tank from the flatcars to the river, where she floated half submerged. Carpenters lagged her with 14-in. timbers to protect her from bumps. A tug lashed on to a 400-ft. hawser, and at 6-m.p.h. started a three-week tow up the Hudson to Troy (142-mi.), through New York’s Barge Canal to Oswego on Lake Ontario (184-mi.), and 1,045 more miles through Lake Ontario, the Welland Canal, Lake Erie, St. Clair River, Lake Huron, the Straits of Mackinac, then due south through Lake Michigan to Whiting. By Halloween, Mr. Kellogg expected to deliver one of the biggest single pieces of freight ever shipped.