The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-09-20
Scientists Find New Fuel

Boston. Mass, September 1s.-That Ed in the scientific world has been gained largely from his efforts to prevent fire and who has been mainly responsible for the establishment of insurance engineer ing experiment stations and for the teaching of insurance engineering as a profession at the Massachusetts Insti- ute of Technology, should be devoting much of his present attention to the means of making a fire might seem strange; but report No. VI, just issued from the Insurance Engineering station at Boston, shows such to be the case. The investigators at this unique station, of which Professor Charles l.. Norton of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech nology is in charge, are inclined to think that they have discovered a new fuel, one of great commercial value. Its name is mud, and it might easily, so 1t Is thought, prove to be very valuable as an emergency fuel should there ever be a recurrence of the coal crisis of the last winter When people are cold in their houses and when factories are clos ing on account of lack of coal, almost any tolerable substitute would be well comed Then too, outside of that field of usefulness, the insurance engineers believe that the lump of mud has com mercial possibilities even in piping times of prosperity like the present, when coal is fairly cheap and plentiful. Of course coal, particularly that of the bituminous
 xxra1I dicff-i mi tor throughout the United States. but black mud is ever so much more common; in fact, you will easily light upon it, vary ing in depth from two or three to perhaps thirty feet, almost anywhere in the world where there are swamps or wet meadows and-what is more important there is a likelihood that you can utilize it as heat-producing material which needs only to receive proper treatment to prove itself indisputably valuable.
 Whether such treatment. which must of course, be expensive and effectual, can ! at present be devised is what the Insur- ance Engineering Experiment Station, of which MT. Atkinson is general director, would like to prove on scale large enough to give really satisfactory re- suits. In the report just issued full account is given of what has already been accomplished in a rough and ready way in other countries, and scientifically in the United States through Professor Norton's experimentation; and a plan Is made for additional contributions from the public for the aid of this special de- partment, which, though intimately con- neeted with the work of the Insurance Engineering Station, does not belong so closely to it that the director would feel himself justified in thus expending its re- search funds. A small plant so it is be- lieved, could be put up for two or three thousand dollars, which would carry out the present plan of ascertaining the prob able cost of converting mud into bri- quettes coke, gas and other secondary products.
 How apparently feasible this scheme appears is. perhaps, most strikingly shown by the remarkable facts about mud of vegetable origin which Mir. At kinson cites. In the first place, as we can readily see incipient coal is what the experiments are dealing with, the partly decomposed vegetable matter known in agriculture as "humus," which forms the body of the large bogs or wet meadows. fresh and salt, that are found everywhere All this substance Is, so to speak, nothing less than bitum- nous coal is the primary process of form ation. By a little assistance rendered to natures processes, perhaps by applica- tion of heat and pressure the geologic ages can. it is quite certain, be fore stalled and mud be made to burn freely and, perhaps, profitably. At any rate there can be no doubt regarding the vast quantities. now existing, of this mud in the meadows and swamps of New Eng land and New Jersey; the Dismal Swamp of Virginia; the Everglades of Florida; the Savannahs and rice swamps of Geor- ga; the big lagoons along the Gulf of Mexico, and the swamp land of the west: and the chemists furthermore. tell us that it regularly consists in the largest part of carbon, the most important ele-