The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1909-12-28
VALUE OF BRIQUETS
FOR LOCOMOTIVES
Conclusions Reached by Two
of the United States Geo.
logical Survey Forces.
RESULT OF EXPERIMENTS
POSSIBILITY OF GETTING MORE
WORK OUT OF ENGINE BOILER.

some conclusions as to the value Of
briquets for locomotive fuel and a few
suggestions as to the possibility Of get
ting more work out Of a locomotive boiler
are given in a report by Walter T. RaJ
and Henry Kreisinger, that has Just bee
published by the United States geological
survey as bulletin 40 The survey &.
/ investigating the mineral resources OF
the country, and is making tests of va
riOus kinds and forms OF coal, with the
/ object Of determining how to reduce
waste in the utilization of coal, how 10
| Increase the value of the abundant low
grade Goals, and how 70 adapt different
Goals to briquetting.
Objects of the Tests.
The primary object Of the tests de-
scribed in bulletin Az was to study the
relative performances Of two sizes Of
brtquetS and of coal, with reference to
efficiency. tendency to smoke. and the
ease with which steam could be kept up,
when each OF the three forms of fuel was
burned at several rates of combustion.
One object kept in mind was the finding
of ways for working locomotive boilers
1 harder, although with present locomotive
designs the steam production may some
times be made sufficient to keep the
wheels slipping, so that the engines have
no use for additional steaming ability Of
the boiler.
The more important results and coHclu-
siOns for the locomotive used may be
briefly summarized as follows:
At low rates Of working, run-Of~mine
coal gives a higher equivalent evapora-
ton than briquets; at medium rates there
is little difference; at high rates briQuets
do considerably better.
There is little difference between the
large and the small briduets; the larger
ones cTumble less; the smallr briquets
are easier to fire and to level on the fire
than the larger ones; either form gives
the fireman far less work and trouble
than run-Of-mine coal
In spars, briQuet fires lose less than
coal fires.
On roads having heavy grades it viii
probably pay well to burn bTiquets, at
least part of the time.
The high-capacity test run with bril-
Quets by no means reached the upper
limit of fairly efficient combustion and
evaporation, but IL was higher than is
likely ever to be attained by such draft
as is feasbly available from a nozzle.
These particular briquets produced
about as much smoke as the coal under
similar conditions; some of the blame for
this tendency to smoke may rest on the
pitch binder.
Perhaps it would pay to add combustion
chambers several feet long TO the front
ends of some locomotive fire boxes, and
to use larger number Of boiler tubes Of
shorter lengths and smaller diameters.
The most useful secondary c0HciusiOn
demonstrated is that the combustion Of
suitable fuel can be kept about the same
in completeness over a very wide range.
This result IS q consequence Of the scrub
bling action Of rapidly moving currents Of
gases. In tn combustion in the fuel bed
the COZ formed at the surface of the par
ticies of fuel and clinging to it is scrub
bed off and replaced by fresh uncOmbined
oxygen.
The bulletin comprises thirty-twO pages
and is illustrated by several diagrams. It
r-an-
to the director of the geological survey
at Washington.