Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 6.2 Consumer choices of lamp oil by 1850.
Lamp fuel
Price ($/liter
[$/gallon])
Description
Properties
Production (million
liter/year [million
gallon/year])
Camphene
or “burning
fluid”
0.13 (0.50)
Combination of
turpentine,
camphor oil,
and ethanol
Bright,
sweet
smelling
342-760
(90-200)
Whale oil
0.34-0.66
68.4
(1.30-2.50)
(18)
Lard oil
0.24 (0.90)
Low quality,
smelly
Coal oil
0.13 (0.50)
A type of fuel
obtained from
coal pyrolysis
Sooty, smelly,
low quality
Kerosene
0.15 (0.60)
From petroleum
Adapted from Kovarik, 2002, used with permission.
camphene, whale oil, lard oil, and coal oil. It is often presented that as whale oil became
scarce—because there were fewer whales—it was substituted with petroleum kerosene.
However, Kovarik (n.d., 2002) makes an interesting point about this otherwise supposedly
smooth transition. According to Kovarik, in 1850 whale oil was already scarce and the main
lamp fuel in use was camphene (Table 6.2). The production of whale oil peaked in 1845 with
18 million gallons a year, and camphene—a mixture of turpentine, camphor oil, and ethanol—
was produced at a level of 90 million gallons. In addition whale oil was much more expensive
than camphene and the other two alternatives (lard oil and coal oil) had poor burning qualities.
At that time, petroleum kerosene came into the picture, but it was not immediately used as a
substitute of other lamp oils. The real switch took place after the U.S. government imposed a
tax of $2.08  per gallon on all ethanol in 1862 to finance the Civil War, which forced cam-
phene, the fuel of choice, out of the market.
The case of whale oil and camphene is a good example of technology push versus market
pull. If whale oil would have been replaced by kerosene because it had superior qualities and
availability, then the case was purely of technology push. However, when the U.S. government
intervened, then the switch to the new technology was more a demand-driven case. Europe, on
the other hand, had a gradual transition from whale oil to kerosene without any government
intervention, thus a case of technology push.
Technology obsolescence
Obsolescence is a natural stage of any technology life cycle, which is caused by the
appearance of a better or more convenient technology. When products or technologies
become obsolete, they are still functional but some advantages of the new alternatives
make them undesirable. In complex systems, for instance planes, some individual compo-
nents (e.g., electronics) become obsolete and much faster than the whole system (Sandborn
and Singh, 2002).
In terms of sustainability, the current hydrocarbon-based technology is past due obsolescence
because of its limited supply and global environmental concerns. Several alternative technologies
 
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