IMPROVEMENTS IN FURNACES OR HEATING APPARATUS
Year: 1867

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Clinton Edgcumbe Brooman at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 12th
November 1867.-A communication from abroad by Eugene Alexandre
Frederic Goguel, of St. Etienne, France.
I, CLINTON EDGCUMBE BROOMAN, of the Firm of Robertson, Brooman, and
Company, of 166, Fleet Street, in the City of London, Patent Agents, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN
FURNACES OR HEATING APPARATUS," to be as follows:-
The object of this Invention is the construction of smoke-consuming
gasogeneous apparatus which will transform solid combustible matters into
combustible gases, and thus satisfy in an industrial point of view all that is.
required of a powerful and smoke-consuming heating apparatus.
The essential features which characterize this apparatus or furnace are,
1st, complete and successive reduction of the fuel in the same apparatus.
without interruption of beat in several communicating fire-places; 2ndly,
ascent and descent of the gases arising from the first combustion or injection
of steam or water into the channels which lead these gases from one fire-place
to another, or even the draught or suction of a blowing apparatus as means of
increasing their draught, of increasing their pressure, of producing hydrogens
by the decomposition of this steam or water, and of facilitating the leading of
the gases from one point to another, and of directing them with a certain
pressure out of this apparatus; 3rdly, the hermetic and almost continuous
mode of charging owing to the reduced volume of the charge; 4thly, the
complete enrichment of the gases developed in all the parts of the apparatus.

page_text: by causing the gases to return into the apparatus which has generated them
in order that they may not issue therefrom until they have been enriched
therein through a layer of incandescent fuel; 5thly, the simple and economical
mode of heating the new air for burning the combustible gases in a special
combustion chamber; and, 6thly, a combustion chamber one of the sides or
walls of which is formed with holes by which the burnt gases pass as through
a sieve in order to enter the apparatus to be heated.
I now proceed to describe a fürnace or apparatus constructed according to
this Invention. Boxes for charging the fuel slide on perforated plates, and
the fuel falls down tubes upon the bars of the first fire-place; these bars are
preferably arranged stepwise or as shelves; this fire-place has hollow fire-
bridges formed with small holes; the fuel is lighted on the bars of the first fire-
place and its distillation effected. The greater portion of the gaseous products
f this distillation pass over the fire-bridges, impinge against the under side
of fresh air tubes,. hereafter referred to, and pass down vertical channels
leading to arched openings or passages; these openings or passages conduct
the gaseous products into the incandescent fuel on the grate bars of a second
fire-place below the first, so that the products become enriched; the other
part of the products passes directly to the second fire-place. Superheated
steam supplied to the hollow fire-bridges escapes by the small holes therein
and favors the passage of the gaseous products down the vertical channels
from the first to the second fire-place, in which this dry steam is decomposed,
and in which the gases and vapors become saturated with carbon in order to
supply to the combustion chamber hereafter referred to only very combustible
gases. Fresh air for burning the gases in the combustion chamber is forced
or drawn through the fresh air pipes before mentioned; these pipes are at the
upper part of the apparatus, and the air admitted by them passes down a
vertical space in one of the walls; the air is thus heated and afterwards
mixes with the gases at the lower part of the vertical space or passes through
openings leading to the combustion chamber. The amount of air admitted
may be regulated by closing more or less the entrances of the air tubes, or by
other means; it is therefore in this combustion chamber that the gases are
burnt by the fresh air; they cannot fail to be completely burnt after having
traversed an openworked partition which is situated between the combustion
chamber and the apparatus or boiler flue to be heated. The furnace or
gasogeneous apparatus is thus based on the principle that instead of effecting
the complete reduction of the fuel in one fire-place or at one point 1 effect it
at different points without interruption of heat in communicating fire-places,
that is to say, that in the first fire-place I cause this fuel to undergo a first com-

page_text: bustion in order afterwards to complete the conibustion at one or several other
points, either by means of grate bars and tuyeres or by forced draught of air
or steam superheated or not. Based on this principle of lighting a combustible
matter a first time in order to convert its volatile components into gas, to
afterwards finish the reduction of the same fuel at one or several other fire-
places of the apparatus, with the view of completely extracting the gases
from the solid part, and of enriching through this ignited fuel the gases
produced by the first combustion, and those developed in the second com-
bustion, the apparatus may be variously modified in form, dimensions,
constitutive parts, and the materials employed for its construction.
forms of apparatus the gases are caused to impinge upon the surface of water
in their passage from the first to the second fire-place.