The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-01-28

| which is nothing but benzol in a weaker form, and benzol is obtained from the manufacture of coke from coal. 1 One of the most valuable by-products of coal is ammonium sulphate. This is l used with excellent success as fer tilizer and is in great demand by the | up to date farmer. It Is easily obtained I in the manufacture of coke and has | good market.
 Petroleum is another of the more valu- able by-products and the thicker or heavier oils obtained in the by-product plans are used from the egine oil on down the scale to axle grease.
 And when MT. Brown" takes his fam I fly to the lakes for a summers outing, the train that takes tnem to their des- | tination gets it's power from coal and the steel rails are given their shape only | by the tremendous heat produced by l coke.
 How Farmer Is Affected
 Even Farmer Jones cures the sore
 shoulder of his. horse with one of the l by-products. The good old fashioned rem 1 edy for soreness in a horse is to rub 1 the afflicted part with nothing else than | axle grease mixed with little powder l Then the farmer htches the horse to l the blow, the blade of which was tenn l pered by means of coke, and blows the 1 back field, which has been enriched by
 a fertilizer obtained as a by-product of | coal.
 When the insects attack the trees in l the orchard, the farmer takes a bucket
 full of coals. pours the by-product tar | on the coals, places the bucket beneath l the tree and the insects are destroyed
 by the dense volume of smoke that pours
 upward.
 | Perhaps the most important of all the 1 by-products, however, is the gas. This is obtained in large quantities in the re- tort method of coke manufacture. Un- 1 fortunately. in the beehive process the l gas is a total loss, as are most of the 1 other by-products On account of the
 tremendous cost of installing a perfect by-product plant the beehive method Is aused in the majority of cases at present.
 Richard Modeneke in his book, ''The
 Coke Industry of the United States" has
 written
 Particularly unfortunate is the fact | that this waste is in most instances de- 1 liberate. the more economical methods being well known to those most inter
 ested." He goes on to explain that the 1 causes for this condition are the con servatism of trade, the necessity of util- izing the enormous investments In coke
 ovens and the low cost of the old ovens | compared to the elaborate by-product installations. In 1907 nearly 62,00o,000 tons
 of coal were charged into coke ovens, yielding more than 40,500,000 tons of coke Roughly, therefore, more than 215O,coo tons of the richest part of the coal were driven of.
 In 1oa however, s,se0.12s tons of coal were carbonized in retorts in the United States. The resulting salable products from the by-product ovens were 15i9l,- | 22O,OO0 cubit feet of coal gas, 6.254 644 tons
 of coke and 60,12s,00o gallons of tar. The
 total value of all by-products was about
 s2s 5oS, ,6s7 The annual drain on the gas coal resources of the country and the im- portance of the coal and coke industries is shown by these figures. The main difficulty in obtaining Illuminating gas l as a by-product is that large amount l of coal cannot be used most of the coal | used hitherto coming from western Penn
 sylvania, the quantity supplied by other
 fields being comparatively small.
 By-Product Illuminating Gas | There Is a great deal of experimenting along the line of Illuminating gas, how ever. and the technologic branch of the i United States geological survey has made a number of valuable tests. The experi- 1 ments with Illuminating gas from by l product plants has been so successful in l some instances, however, that the gas is supplied to large cities for lighting pur- poses. Among the cities thus supplied
 are Indianapolis. Duluth. Baltimore. Me- | keesport, Pa. and a number of others. | The plant that supplies the gas for Bal timore Is Il miles distant from the city. Four million cubic feet daily are supplied by this plant. The Camden Coke com 1 pany of Camden, N J., pumps illuminat- | ing gas from it's ovens to New Brunswick
 and Plainfied. s3 miles distant, where it
 is used for lighting purposes. 1 In Germany there are number of bv- | products plants that manufacture coke
 free of charge, taking as their profits the by-products of the coal in return. This
 method is used to some extent by the 1 Semet-Solvay company at it's Ensley
 basis with the Tennessee Coal, Iron and | Railroad company. The latter company | supplies the Semet-Solvay company with a certain number of tons of coal per day and receives the coke in return. | There is a plan on foot in some of the eastern cities to supply heat also to the | city from the coke ovens. The plan is to catch the heat that comes off the ovens and transport 1t to the consumer in the | city.
 l In discussing the Alabama coke Mir l Coke" Edward Parker says ''rhe total value of the domestic coal tar obtained in 1910 amounted to s1. .5e9 453 and the value of the coal tar products I imported into the country was s10. 234. .524 l It is probable that the consumer has | paid about s14.00000O for these importa- tions. considering ocean freights, com 1 missions and other expenses" 1 In discussing the Alabama coke Mir. l Parker says:
 Value of Alabama Coke