The Tiffin tribune. (Tiffin, Ohio) 1868-1887, 1874-07-30
THE COHIsG FUEL.
Peat Tarned Into Camel Coal in
Thirty Minutes.

for the conversion of peat into fuel in
forty-eight hours has attracted geneT-
al attention, and brought to light an
other invention of a still more re-
, markable character, which completes
the process in thirty minutes. The
last takes the spOngy, wet, sticky bog
earth, and changes It into dry fuel,
hard enough to take polish, and dry
j as camel coal. Peat, everybody
. knows, is coal soft and unbaked. In
J some slowly drying lake moss
] and turf have grown, lay
, er above layer, tree-trunks have
sunk into the mass, and the whole
has slowly thickened and increased
year by year till the lake is gone, and
quaking bog is left in its place, on
whose surface the moss and grass
and sedge spread and thieken till it
has grown above the old level OF the
lake, spread up tue hillside, risen
twenty, thirty, forty feet, drowning
out whole forests with steady rise.
Meanwhile the old layers are gradu-
ually changing, the plant-stems turn
black as sthe carbon separates from
the HYDROCARBONS of gigantic growth,
till at last the sticky black clay is tue
best fuel known-if it will only burn.
All the curious chain of chemical
compounds that make q fuel worth
sOmethiag in the manufacture of gas
are there-enough Of carbon to equal
the best coal none, or the merest
trace Of phosphorous and silicon, that
make fuel worthless in iron manu-
factufe; less cinder and less ash than
/ auv other natural fuel known; no
Ia hrn and mo oion. xvnlaf.Na
| products and more carbon all this,
and with it thirty, forty, fifty and
sixty per cent. water, and water does
not burn. In time nature can be
trusted to dry the peat aud give in
place coal draining the water
with sudden Tits of strata squeezing
1t out with great masses of overlying
rock or ocean, baking it with internal
fires, ard at last-in q few million
years, more or less-the result is
coal. The new machine taxes the
peat ard drops it out in hard cylin-
ders, dry and solid in half an hour,
more OF less. Men have tried to dry
peat time out Of mind. Irishmen
take it Row as they did q thousand
years ago, cut it into square blocks
and dry Il in the sun. Half the water
leaves it and half stays, and q loose,
light, fiFOus mass is left with no CO.
hesion, which cannot be handled for !
transportation, or burnt in any fur
mace mere elaborate than a cOtter's
hearth. 1t will not "stand" blast,
men say. In all temperate climates
the pest even to get this product can
be dried only four or five months of
the year. II a large supply is wanted,
1t must be done under cover. The
first frost leaves worthless, disinte-
grated mass and the manufacture
takes from three to four weeks, long
| time I'm q short season. 1t is som
fifty years since men began to i'm
prove on the rude process. Peat has
been squeezed into cones fitting into
each other, rammed into cylindrical
moids with heavy pistons, whirled in
centrifugal dryiDg-machines, stamp
ed into square, smooth blocks, stirred
and puddled in the hope that it would
set but stamped, or whirled or pud-
died, 1t still takes days, perhaps
weeks, to dry. Heat, artificial or nat
ural, must be applied to complete the
work, and the resulting product has
too much water and too little cohe-
sion. The new process Is the result
of years Of experiment, in a secluded
nook on the Hudson, at an expense
of some fifty thousand dollars.
Three things must be done. The peat
must be dried, it must be left in q
solid mass, and it must not be unnec-
essarily handled. 1t costs something
to pick up block Of peat and carry
it ten feet even. A combination of
two previous processes is used in the
new machine. The peat is dried by
the direct application OF furnace heat
and solidified by the blows of an iron
plunger. To these is added the novel
feauture of the new notwithstanding
by utilizing the latent heat of steam.
The peat is fed into an ordinary pug
mill vat, where the semi.fiuid mass is
stirred-very much as the cream in
thaeFrJ y te9sreaM jaeRe5aR 4 .Rrg gbby
rounds the vat. Into the peat pipe
communicating with 3 high-pressure
boiler is led, and just opposite the
mouth of this pipe another opens,
which runs oD out of the vat, and
through the furnace which heats the
boiler just mentioned. When the
machine is in motion the successive
Jets of superheated steam in their leap
from pipe to pipe force a steady
stream OF peat, and by successive
blows push it on its way through the
furnace. Here it might become har-
dened and stick il it were not for an
other property possessed by peat,
that under high temperature its tarry
and pyroligneou5 particles melt, and
the whole becomes q plastic yielding
mass, which slides along under repeat
ed impacts from the steam. AT last
the peat Is discharged into chamber,
while the steam rises to the surface
of the chamber and is conveyed to
the steam jacket surrounding the peat
vat. Freed from the steam, the peat
comes under the blows Of a heavy
iron plunger, worked by an eccentric,
which forces out q coil of solid peat,
anywhere from two to eight inches
In diamster, according to the size Of
the machine. To travel from the vat
to the plunger, and to travel from wet
peat to dry fuel has taken about thir-
ty minutes. rrFFa rHfs
This machine turns out an article
ready for fuel. 1t loses none of its
volatile products, and is turned into a
solid, homogeneous body by the ee-
mentIng effect of the half-melted
pitch. The same furnace drives the
engine used in running the machine,
furnishes the superheated steam, and
drives the peat in its passage, &c. The
latent heat of the superheated steam
which puts the peat in motion is util-
lied in the steam-jacket around the
vat. One of these machines with q
two-inch aperture, has been in sue
cessfuI operation during an entire
season. A fragment of its product
has been aDaIYzed by a chemist and
found to be an ideal fuel. Practical
men, like the managers of the New
York Central &c Hudson River Rail-
road Company, and the New York &
New Haven Railroad, stand ready to
take it at the rate OF 5000 tons a
wear, or more, at the rate OF five dol
lars 6 ton. A fuel for locomotives
which has no Stag or cinder and ham
dies easily, is simply invaluable. One
of the largest blast furnaces in the
country has also made an attempt to
obtain the use Of this new fuel. As
to the practical working Of the
process on q large scale, the plans and
drawings for large machines have
been extensively examined by Mr..
Bromley, of the Quintard Iron Works
and he pronounces it theoretically
and practically perfectn in written
opinion which he prepared after
long conference with the inventor.
Those familiar with the product Of
the ordinary peat machine are aware
that 1t Is light or dark brown prod
uct, shading almost to black, spongy,
lighter thaR water, and apt 70 erum-
bic, and almost invariably requiring
an exposure TO the air or furnace heat
before 1t Is sufficiently dry for fuel.
A fragment OF the new peat fuel is a
jet black cylinder, not easily cut with
q knife, hard enough to take polish,
showing a clearly defined cleavage,
weighing seventy-five pounds to the
cubic foot, and containing less than
five per cent. of water. The best Irish
peat charcoal has twenty per cent.
more heating power than the best
Newcastle coal, and one hundred per
cent. more than German coal; and it
il the opinion OF experts that the new
fuel, from It's weight and the preser-
vation of the volatile compounds in
4 Il .I.wa sv.fN fNnr,a