Boverton Redwood, a Pioneer of the Oil Industry
Boverton Redwood (1846-1919) was the English chemist known for his petroleum consulting work and the Redwood viscometer.
Boverton Redwood (1846-1919) was the English chemist known for his petroleum consulting work and the Redwood viscometer. Raised in a family of pharmacists, he joined London's Petroleum Association at 20 and spent the next half century as the man Britain consulted on how oil should be measured, stored and moved. He helped standardise the flash point test, built the viscometer that carries his name, advised the venture that found the first oil in Iran, and gave the Admiralty fuel advice for ten years.[1][4]
A Childhood Among Pharmacists
Thomas Boverton Redwood was born in London on 26 April 1846. His father Theophilus Redwood (1806-1892) was a professor at the Pharmaceutical Society's school and editor of the Pharmaceutical Journal. His mother Charlotte Elizabeth died in 1868. Boverton was the eldest of six boys and two girls.[1][2][4]
He attended University College School between 1857 and 1862. From there he went into his father's laboratory and learned analytical chemistry at the bench.[1][4] That training shaped what came next, because the first questions anyone asked about petroleum were laboratory questions.
The Petroleum Association and Lamp Oil
In 1866, at 20, he joined the Petroleum Association in London, and three or four years later became its chemist and secretary. GEO ExPro dates the post to 1869, Grace's Guide to 1870.[1][4] Petroleum in Britain was then mostly a lamp fuel, and when a given oil became dangerous was an open question. In 1873 he married Mary Elizabeth Letchford. They had two daughters and a son, Bernard, who died in 1911.[2][4]
In 1877 the chemist Sir Frederick Abel brought him in to help standardise flash point testing, which measures the temperature at which an oil's vapour catches from a flame. The work led to an improved version of the Abel instrument.[1] In 1881 he studied how air pressure and climate affected gases dissolved in oil, taking his readings in the Alps and in India. In 1885 he and Abel gave London's Metropolitan Board of Works recommendations for safe lamps.[1]
The same measure still governs fuel on ships. SOLAS regulation II-2/4.2.1 bars fuel with a flash point below 60 degrees Celsius, with some exceptions. Emergency generators may use fuel down to 43 degrees.[9]
The Viscometer and Redwood Seconds
After flash point the next question was flow. How much an oil thickened in the cold decided whether it would run through a pipe and how it would burn. In 1885-86 Redwood developed his own viscometer, which timed in seconds how long a set volume of oil took to run through a small opening. It soon became the standard instrument of the British oil industry.[1] One example in the Science Museum collection is an "Admiralty type" made by Baird and Tatlock of London for testing oil fuel.[6]
Fuels went on being named in seconds as a result. The British fuel standard BS 2869 still gives heavy fuel oil the alias "3500-second oil".[7] Marine fuels have moved to a different unit. In ISO 8217 grades such as RME 180 and RMG 380, the number is the maximum viscosity in centistokes at 50 degrees Celsius.[7]
Lectures, a Treatise and a Patent
He began putting what he knew on paper. His Cantor Lectures at the Society of Arts came out as a book in 1886, followed by Petroleum: Its Production and Use in 1887.[1][2] In 1889 he took out a joint patent with James Dewar, the Scottish chemist known for liquefying gases, on distilling oil under high pressure. GEO ExPro treats this as a foundation of the modern cracking process.[1]
That year he also changed career. He left the Petroleum Association to work as an independent petroleum consultant and analytical chemist.[4] His London office employed geologists and engineers, and GEO ExPro calls it probably the first of its kind. In 1891 he became adviser to the Corporation of London under the Petroleum Acts.[1][4]
In the early 1890s he went to Egypt to look at moving oil through the Suez Canal.[1] It was a live subject. Marcus Samuel's Murex became the first bulk oil tanker through the Suez Canal in 1892.[10] In 1894 an apparatus for testing oil vapour pressure in tanks won him the Telford Medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers, and with his brother Robert and H. Barringer he devised an instrument for finding water under oil in tanks.[1] Petroleum: A Treatise appeared in 1896, covering the geography, geology, chemistry, transport and use of oil, and it went through several editions.[1][2]
His spare time went to machines that used the stuff. He was among the founders of the Self-Propelled Traffic Association in 1895 and the Royal Automobile Club in 1897, and that year he bought a custom-built Daimler.[2]
The Persian Venture
When William Knox D'Arcy obtained a 60-year oil concession from Persia on 28 May 1901, Redwood was his technical adviser. To run the field work he suggested George Bernard Reynolds, an engineer who had worked on the Indian railways and in the Sumatran oil fields, and D'Arcy hired him.[1][3] Reynolds began drilling at Chiah Surkh in Kermanshah in November 1902. A second well struck oil in January 1904, but the flow soon fell to a few barrels a day.[3]
After three years without result D'Arcy's money was running out. At that point Redwood brought him together with Burmah Oil of Scotland. The Concessions Syndicate was formed in Glasgow in 1905 to take over his interests, and Reynolds was told to leave Chiah Surkh and move to Khuzistan.[1][3] Two wells at Shardin in 1906 and 1907 came up dry. In November 1907 he and the Burmah geologist Cunningham-Craig surveyed the Masjid-i-Suleiman area.[3]
Drilling on well No. 1 began on 23 January 1908. The syndicate sent Reynolds a telegram saying that if no oil was found he should stop and ship the equipment back. On 16 May a strong smell of gas came from the well, and at 4 a.m. on 26 May it gushed oil from about 360 metres (1,180 feet). It tested at about 297 barrels a day the next day.[3] Reynolds wrote back that striking oil might change his instructions. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed on 14 April 1909 with £2 million of capital, and it is the root of today's BP.[3]
The Admiralty and Fuel for the Fleet
Through all of this Redwood was technical adviser to the Admiralty, from 1904 to 1913.[1] He was knighted in 1905 and made a baronet in 1911.[2] Winston Churchill took over the Admiralty in October 1911 wanting fast battleships, and the Queen Elizabeth class design approved in 1912 burned oil.[8] Britain had plenty of coal, but its oil would have to come from abroad.
In 1912 Redwood sat on the Royal Commission on oil fuel for the Navy and told the Admiralty that every reasonable encouragement should be given to developing a British fuel supply.[1][4] According to the historian Geoffrey Jones, he wanted that supply to come from independent companies and disliked Shell and Standard Oil.[1] In 1914 the British government took 51 percent of Anglo-Persian, along with a 20-year fuel agreement for the Navy, the result of talks Churchill opened in 1913.[3][5] HMS Queen Elizabeth was commissioned that December.[8]
The War Years and His Death
He was close to 70 during the First World War and still in government service, as Director of Petroleum Research at the Ministry of Munitions, then Director of Technical Investigations for the Petroleum Executive, and on a trench warfare committee.[4] He served in 1914-1915 as first president of the Institution of Petroleum Technologists, later the Institute of Petroleum.[1] In 1915 he published The Petroleum Technologist's Pocket-Book with Arthur Eastlake.[1]
One of his last jobs was examining oil from the Chesterfield borings in Derbyshire. He died in London on 4 June 1919, aged 73, after a few days' illness. His wife lived until 1937.[1][4] When he started out petroleum was known as lamp oil, and by the year he died it was fuelling battleships.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Boverton Redwood?
Boverton Redwood (1846-1919) was the English chemist known for his petroleum consulting work and the Redwood viscometer. He advised D'Arcy's Persian venture and the Admiralty.
What is a Redwood viscometer?
It is an instrument, developed in 1885-86, that times in seconds how long a set volume of oil takes to run through a small opening. It was for many years the standard instrument of the British oil industry.
Sources
- GEO ExPro. Sir Thomas Boverton Redwood: A Pioneer in Petroleum Engineering.
- Wikipedia. Thomas Boverton Redwood.
- AAPG Explorer. The First Oil Field in the Middle East.
- Grace's Guide to British Industrial History. Thomas Boverton Redwood.
- Wikipedia. Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
- Science Museum Group. Sir Boverton Redwood's Standard Viscometer, object 1974-413.
- Wikipedia. Fuel Oil.
- Wikipedia. Queen Elizabeth-class Battleship.
- SOLAS Chapter II-2, Regulation 4.2.1, Dutch official publication wetten.overheid.nl.
- Wikipedia. SS Murex.
