Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1873-03-20
The Economy of Fuel.

the same amount of work an inferior fire.
man will consume twice the quantity of
fuel that is required by one who is eX-
pert at his business. That which is true
of steam engines and furnaces is equally
true of our household stoves; and one
housekeeper will manage to get along, and
do equally as good work, with from one
half to one-fOurth less fuel than is con-
sumed by Others Now, the faculty which
enables some to ecOnomise 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 a science and may be acquired by
careful study of the principles which
govern combustion and the distribution
of heat; and these are by no means diff
cult to comprehend.
An important circumstance connected
with fuel in relation TO its efficiency is it's
condition as regards moisture, and the
action of the atmosphere. Coal or wood
that has absorbed moisture is not only
dlsagreeable, but very unecOnOmical.
Numerous carefully conducted expert
ments show that it requires one pound Of
coal to evaporate fourteen pounds of wa
ter, while one pound of wood evapOrates
seven pounds of water If therefore our
posed to rain or snow so as to absorb
moisture, this moisture must be all evapo-
rated and carried up the chimney as steam
by the heat produced by the burning fuel,
and this heat is of course just so much
wasted that otherwise might be made use
full.
But the loss arising from the fact that
to get rid of all moisture requires heat, is
of frn
such exposure. It has now been very
fully demonstrated that exposure to air
and moisture causes, in both coal and
wood, 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 preservation Of fuel from atmos-
pheric influences. To use it in a damp
condition involves great waste; but it is
not enough that coal and wood be dry at
the time they are used-they must be
kept constantly dry during the whole
period OF their storage. This fact is fully
recognized 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 a
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
ter, the next point is to see that the fuel
is properly and completely burned. We
do not by this refer to the mere escape of
a few cinders through the CRATE, for these
may be recovered by the use of a com
mon screen. The SIS of fuel which
arises from that imperfect combination
that carries our coal and wood up the
chimney before they have given out more
than half the heat that they are
capable Of giving out, far exceeds
any small loss occasioned by the
existence of cinders in the ash
heap; and among those who are ignorant
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 that of all the
tons of coal and cords of wood that we
buy, the entire quantity, with the excep-
tion of few pounds of ashes passes up
| the chimney in perfectly invisible form.
! The small amount of smoke that we see
forms 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.
bic gases-tAe 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
carbonio acid. To produce this gas there
are required six pounds of charcoal and
sixteen pounds of oxygen, and to furnish
| this amount Of oxygen no less than
| eighty pounds of air are needed. But il
| happens that carbon forms another com
pound containing but half the quantity
| of oxygen that carbonic acid does. This
is known as carbonic oxide-an invisible
gas which burns freely with pale blue
flame that is often seen flickering evel
! the bed of red hot Goals in our stoves
after all the gas that was originally con
tanned in the coal has been driven off
This blue flame is often supposed to bt
the flame of burning sulphur; bat in al
most all cases it is due TO carbonic oxide
| and is in reality the returning Of half
burned fuel. When thus re- burned th'
fuel gives out just as much heat as it dit
in its first combustion: and hence, If VI