Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1878-05-22
FLOUR MILL EXPLOSIONS,
The Record of Disasters Suggested by
the Minneapolis Mystery. .-. r-
Worcester Mass Gazette.

Worcester (Mass.) Gazette.
There are great many cases of this
kind of explosion on record; one of the
best known is the burning of the Trades
town mills in Glasgow, Scotland. The
first explosion was caused by the igni-
ton of the dust by sparks from the
friction of two of the grinding stones,
where the feed bad been stopped but
not the motion ofthe stones, situation
very dangerous, but likely to happen in
any large mill with many runs of stone.
Different processes were going on in
other parts of the mill, and the flour
dust was everywhere thick, SO that q
second and larger explosion naturally
followed the first, blowing out the gable
ends of the building, reducing it to ruins
and setting the woodwork on fire. This
disaster was scientifically studied by
Professor McAdam and Rankinee, and
the facts we're clearly brought out by
inquiry and experiments with -four
dust sifted into a gas jet and exploded
in boxes. The composition of the -four
dust is mainly starch and gluten, with
smaller proportions of gum, sugar and
OIL All these substances contain
largely carbon, hydrogen and oxygen,
and when burned: yield carbonic acid
gases and water vapor. These gases
necessarily occupy greater space than
the dust and air from which they are
derived, particularly under the high
temperature produced by the burning.
and their instantaneous expansion is
called in common language an explo-
sion. osi -lil ...-' = yI.a2 ~ r.-.nf
The flour mill of Champion, Adams
q Co.. in Detroit, was burned in De-
cember, 1875 A workman was shovel
ing middlings at night by the light of a
lamp with a broken globe. The dust
caught fire, and the room was almost
Instantly in flames in every part, so
that the man was badly burned before
he could escape. In September, 1864,
the Macontah mills in Illinois were
burned because miller carried a
lighted lamp to the middlings chest,
when he went to Jar down the middI-
ings. In 1868 Schmidt & Co.'s mill at
St. Louis was destroyed in the same
way, and the same thing happened at
Evansville, Ind, in April, 1875. AT
Dover, KY. one of the floors broke, and
the dust ignited at the boiler furnace
In 1869 Bertchy's mill in Milwaukee
was burned because a candle was left
near the feed spout. In 1869, also, a
fire and explosion occurred in the At
lantic mills in Brooklyn from an open
light, which the miller carried to the
boiling chest to which he went for the
purpose of mending broken rope.
The miller was burned, but the mill
was saved by vertical stand pipe.
One of the most curious cases Of
which we have heard occurred at
Binghamton, N. Y. The mill had
been left safely shut up for the night as
was supposed, when freshet set the
water over the gate and started the
machinery The burrstones soon sent
out a shower of sparks, and a confa-
grafton followed. Nor is it flour dust
alone that is dangerous; In the Pull
man palace car works, in 1875, an ex-
plosion occurred = in one sidof the
chutes for conveying rubbish and
shavlngs, caused by the ignition of
wood dust which for the first time be-
came mixed with the right quantity of
air to form an explosive compound.