Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-02-07


IIOW long will our coal last. and what will re-
place it when it is gone? People have gone
using whatever fuel was most convenient
and without regard to consequences, assuming that
Nature had in her great storehouse lnexhaustlble
supplies. But this is not true.
In many parts of the world the shortage of coal
has already assumed serious proportions but in the
United States have not yet felt that must
husband supplies. The American people are
proverbially the wasteful and extravagant
in the world. Already we have destroyed the bulk
of our great forests, with little or no attempt to
replace them. We have gone wild over the pro-
duction of oil and natural gas and have drilled the
few more dollars that already we have exhausted
a large part of our supply. Before we realized the
value of natural gas fuel wells with production
of millions of cubic feet day allowed to blow
off for months into the atmosphere, utterly wasting
the most valuable fuel that man ever had.
In handling coal resources. we have been
equally as extravagant: but in this case the waste
has been more criminal since we cannot plead
ignorance inability to handle the product. We
have been crowdng and pushing to turn every
available pound of fuel into gold regardless of
sequences. and it mattered little whether our chill
dren's children would suffer for greed not.
We have wasted coal supply in two ways:
wasteful methods of mining and poor and made
quate ways OF utilization
Economy OF Production
GOAL has been so plentiful that the miner has
~ taken only the best. If the roof coal or bottom
coal showed nerOrity it was not mined. and the coal
in the pillars has frequently been sacrificed because
of carelessness in allowing the roof to Esti-
mates vary as to the amount thus left behind in
pillars alone, some authorities putting it as high
fifty per cent In the best practice to-day. how
ever practically all the coal is removed except
that which is impure for is left up form
the roof. The wastes just described criminal,
because it is easy matter to obvate them. and
our laws should be framed to provide adequate
punishment for such extravaganza
The losses in the utilization of coal much
greater than those OF mining; but in this latter
branch of the subject there is excuse for
ignorant and learn only through long experience.
We likely to look at our wonderful compound
condensing steam engines marvels of mechanical
ingenuity and efficiency but when learn that
in the best types only fourteen per cent of the
calorifc power of the fuel is utilized they like
a monument to wastefu extravaganza. Our
giant steam locomotives, dashing country.
laden with people happy in the thought that by the
aid Of these powerful machines they are enabled
soon to see home and loved ones,
wasteful, utilizing only about five per cent of the
real value of the fuel consumed.
The most economical method of generating power
from coal tar devised is by converting the fuel
into producer gas and using this in a gas engine
Recent work by the Government has demonstrated
that producer gas can be made successfully from all
grades of coal, rang quality from brown Ignite
to anthracite, at small cost. BY this method from
thirty to forty per cent of the calorc value of the
fuel is utilized. This to be small percentage
but when it is compared with fourteen per cent for
stationary engines and five per cent for locomotives
it shows an enormous gain in efficiency.
Where the Waste Is Greatest
DROBABLY the most criminal waste of fuel occurs
IN the production OF coke in ordinary beehive
In the Connellsvle, Pennsy lvana field alone
twenty-five thousand ovens of this type in al
most daily In making coke. about thirty five
per cent. of the coal is burned to coke the other
sixty five per cent. Part of this burning is neces