IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY AND APPARATUS FOR PREPARING, SHAPING, AND DRYING PEAT AND OTHER VEGETABLE AND MINERAL SUBSTANCES
Year: 1867

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Frederick Ludwig Hahn Danchell
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
2nd August 1867.
I, FREDERICK LUDWIG HAHN DANCHELL, of Horwich, in the. County of
Lancaster, Civil Engineer, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention
for "IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY AND APPARATUS FOR PREPARING, SHAPING,
AND DRYING PEAT AND OTHER VEGETABLE AND MINERAL SUBSTANCES," to be as
follows:-
The nature of my Invention consists, first, in the general arrangement of
the machinery for macerating or preparing the peat or other vegetable and
mineral substances for forming it into dises or blocks, and delivering the same
into troughs, which are deposited by trucks, tramways, and guide rollers on
the ground, on which they are left to dry by exposure to the atmosphere.
The macerator consists of two rollers with diagonal grooves and projections,
and with diagonal ribs on the casing within which they work; the macerator
forces the peat out through a spout, and deposits it in a trough supported on
rollers; these troughs are carried forward by the peat, and the peat in travelling
forward is cut into blocks by-wires distended between cross arms placed above
the trough. The portable macerators are mounted on rails laid on the bog or
drying ground in the positions required for dividing it into plots of suitable
size, and the troughs with the blocks of peat in them are laid side by side
on the ground, and left there to dry-by-exposure-to-the-atmosphere...
Secondly, in the general arrangement of the machinery for preparing the
peat or other vegetable and mineral substances for forming it into. blocks, and

page_text: delivering the same on to a series of endless travelling bands, by which the
blocks are moved to and fro in a drying stove, and turned over at each end
thereof; also in the arrangement of apparatus for distributing heated air or
currents of air in the drying stove. In this arrangement the macerator is
stationary and delivers the peat or other substance to a moulding machine
consisting of two sets of moulds and plungers, the latter worked by eccentrics.
The blocks of peat are delivered on to the upper endless band of a series of
endless bands which traverse to and fro in a drying stove; these bands
are made of strips of metal, fixed at their ends to the links of two endless
chains. Part of the links are cast of malleable iron and part of hoop iron.
The blocks of peat or other vegetable and mineral substances in dropping from
one endless band to the other slide down inclined planes, and turn one-fourth
over, so as to present all sides in succession to the action of the currents of air,
which are produced by a forcing or exhausting fan, or by a chimney, and which
may be artificially heated or not. By means of the improved machinery and
apparatus above described the peat or other vegetable and mineral substances
under operation are more thoroughly prepared, shaped, and dried in less time
and with less manual labour than by the machinery heretofore employed for
those purposes.