The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1873-02-20
THE ECONOMY OF FUEL.

fireman Will consume twice the quantity
Vt fuel that is required by one who il
expert at his business. That which il
true of steam engines and furnaces il
equally true of our household stoves ant
one housekeeper will manage to get along
and do equally as good work, with from
one-half to one fourth less fuel than il
consumed by others. Now, the faculty
which enables some to economist fuel Is,
in great measure, an art; that is to say
it depends upon experience and the skill
which arises from manual dexterity but
it is also science and may be acquired by
careful study Of the principles which
govern combustion Of heat; and these
are by no means difficult to comprehend
An important circumstance connected
with fuel in relation to it's efficiency is it's
condition as regards. moisture, and the
action of the atmosphere. Coal or wood
that has absorbed moisture is not only
disagreeable, bat very ineconomical. M.
merous carefully conducted experiments
show that it requires one pound of coal to
evaporate fourteen pounds of water, while
one pound of wood evaporates seven
pounds of water. IF therefore, our wood
pile, or our coal Din, should be exposed
to rain or snow SO as to absorb moisture,
this moisture must BIZ all evaporated and
carried up the chimney as steam by the
burning fuel, and this heat is of course
just so much wasted that otherwise might
be made useful.
But the loss arising from the fact that
to get rid Of all moisture requires heat, is
not the .only item of loss arising from
such exposure. It has now been very full
~ demonstrated that exposure to air and
moisture causes, in both coal and wood, a
sort of slow combustion, which lessons
their efficiency by from ten to thirty per
cent. One of the first points then that
demands our attention is the careful ores
ervatiOn of fuel from atmospheric infu-
ences. To use it in damp condition in
wolves great waste; but it is not enough
that coal and wood be dry at the time
they are used-they must be kept con-
stantly dry during the wholezperiod of
their storage. This fact is fully recog
nized by railway companies, who always
keep their wood carefully covered and
purchasers of coal and wood would do
well to see that the fuel which they buy
has been properly kept Coal taken from
heap that has been exposed for months
to the elements, is not as valuable, weight
for weight, as coal that has been well
kept.
Having taken proper care IN this mat
ser, the next poiut is TO see that the fuel
ia properly and completely burned. We
do not by this refer to tho mere escape of
a few cinders through the CRATE, for these
may be recovered by the use of COM
mon screen. The loss of fuel which arises
from that imperfect combination that car
rles our coal an6 wood up the chimney
before they have given out more than
half the heat that they are capable of Civ.
ing out, far exceeds any small loss occas-
Toned by the existence of cinders in the
ash heap and among those who are ig-
norant Of the phenomena which occur
during the combustion of coal the source
of this loss is never so much as suspected.
We do not always remember hat of all
the tons of coal and cords Of wood we
buy, the entire quantity, with the excep-
ton of few pounds OF ashes passes up
the chimney,in perfectly invisible form.
The small amount Of smoke that we see
folms but very small part of the fuel
that is actually consumed, and may be
safely left out of the calculation. Coal
and wood are both composed of charcoal
or coke combined with certain combusti-
BILE gases-the carbon or charcoal form.
ing, however, the largest portion of our
fuel. When this carbon is fully saturated
with the oxygen of the air it forms a
dense, invisible gas, generally known as
carbonic acid. To produce this gas there
are required six pounds of charcoal and
sixteen pounds of oxygen, and to furnish
this amount of oxygen not less than 80
hounds of air are needed. But it hap
pens that carbon forp,s another compound
containing containing but half the quanti-
ty of oxygen that carbonic acid does.
This ia known as carbonic oxide-an in
/ Il, s u