AN IMPROVED PROCESS FOR INCREASING THE COMBUSTIBILITY OF COAL, COKE, AND OTHER FUEL
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Alexander Melville Clark at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 19th April 1879. A communication
from abroad by Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann and Charles Edwards, both
of Paris, France.
ALEXANDER MELVILLE CLARK, of 53, Chancery Lane, in the County of Middlesex,
Patent Agent.
"AN IMPROVED PROCESS FOR INCREASING THE COMBUSTIBILITY
OF COAL, COKE, AND OTHER FUEL." [A communication from abroad by Baron
Georges Eugène Haussmann and Charles Edwards, both of Paris, France.]
This Invention has for its object to render mineral fuel such as coal, coke, anthra-
cite, etc., as combustible as charcoal. I first grind the fuel to fine powder, and then
thoroughly mix with it a small percentage (about 2 to 4 per cent.) of potash, soda,
or baryta, combined or not with a suitable acid, such as carbonic acid, for example.
This addition, which might be more considerable, is employed in the form of a
powder or dissolved in water. Several salts of soda, potash, &c., such as the
aluminates of these bases, for example, give the desired combustibility as well as
other salts and different combinations to be indicated hereafter, but it should be
observed that the chlorides of potassium, sodium, &c., will not produce this result,
so that in order to succeed it is necessary to have an oxygenated combination (of
potassium, sodium, or barium, together or separately), capable of bringing by chemical
affinity the oxygen of the air in contact with the coal, which when sufficiently
heated, will in certain cases revivify by its reaction the alkaline metals, the high
combustibility of which is known. The alkaline manganates and several salts of
this description can therefore be employed for the object in view.
The mixtures of coal with the oxides of potassium, sodium, &c., and the salts
already mentioned may be converted into a highly combustible coke. To obtain
this in the form of that from gas retorts or coke ovens, it is only necessary to
introduce the above mixtures in the same way that coal is put into the retort or
oven for making gas, or for preparing coke for metallurgical purposes.
If the fuel is required of uniform shape, I add to the finely powdered coke of
lean or anthracitous coal, besides the products of potash or soda, &c., some agglome-
rating substances such as tar, pitch, oils, paste, the gelatinous extract of the fucus
crispus, lichens, &c. The mode of moulding which I prefer and reserve to myself for this
kind of fuel is that adopted in making vermicelli or maccaroni, whereby the fuel is
produced in a very subdivided yet solid state, which is very accessible to the oxygen
...

page_text: of the air, or the fuel may be otherwise moulded. The substances intended to be
passed through the moulding machine must be worked or kneaded either in a mortar
mill or between rollers. The above agglomerated substances are ordinarily heated
in gas retorts, which enables me to obtain oils, tar, or pitch, which can be used for
the manufacture of other agglomerative fuel similar to those distilled when these
have been used as the agglomerating agents.