IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS FOR PREPARING - PEAT FOR FUEL, APPLICABLE ALSO FOR CRUSHING AND WORKING OR KNEADING CLAY AND OTHER LIKE SUBSTANCES
Year: 1873

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Henry Harrison, of Great George Street, in the
City of Westminster, and James William Butler, of Stonebridge
Park, Willesden, in the County of Middlesex, Engineers, for the
Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS FOR PREPARING -
PEAT FOR FUEL, APPLICABLE ALSO FOR CRUSHING AND WORKING OR KNEADING
CLAY AND OTHER LIKE SUBSTANCES."
Sealed the 9th May 1873, and dated the 11th March 1878.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Henry Harrison
and James William Butler at the Office of the Commissioners of
Patents, with their Petition, on the 11th March 1878.
'
We, HENRY HARRISON, of Great George Street, in the City of
Westminster, and JAMES WILLIAM BUTLER, of Stonebridge Park, .
Willesden, in the County of Middlesex, Engineers, do hereby declare

page_text: APPARATUS FOR PREPARING PEAT FOR FUEL, APPLICABLE ALSO FOR CRUSHING
AND WORKING OR KNEADING CLAY AND OTHER LIKE SUBSTANCES," to be as
follows:-
This Invention relates to a peculiar combination and arrangement of
machinery or apparatus for cutting up and pulping peat preparatory to
its being pressed into blocks, brickets, or balls, & for expelling the water
therefrom, and is also applicable for crushing and working or kneading
clay and other like substances, and consists in the employment of a pair
of rotatory cutters, disintegrators, or pulpers in combination with a pug
mill, which pulpers not only reduce the peat, when applied for that
purpose, to a fine state of division, thereby facilitating the escape of the
fixed water contained within the cellular matter of the peat, but expel
the pulped peat in readiness to be fed into the compressing machine.
The pug mill may be of the ordinary construction employed in brick
machinery; it receives the fresh cut or other peat and serves to feed or
force it downwards into a chamber containing the before-mentioned
rotatory disintegrators or pulpers. Those disintegrators or pulpers may
be disposed horizontally or otherwise side by side within a casing or
chamber which they fit with more or less accuracy. Each disintegrator
consists of a cylinder having a series of helicoidal cutting blades or ribs
formed thereon of considerable pitch, each blade or rib making by
preference only about half a turn in the length of the cylinder. The
blades or ribs on one cylinder form right hand spirals, and those on the
other cylinder left hand spirals, the two cylinders being geared together-
so as to revolve in opposite directions. As they revolve the combined
nction of the two sets of blades or ribs reduces the peat which is fed or
pressed in between the cylinders by the pug mill to a fino state of
division or pulp, and expells the same ready for the subsequent operation
of pressing.
In order to absorb the water which is expelled by the pressing process
(which process may be effected by any well known or suitablo form of
press) we propose to employ pallets of hard wood or metal cither
perforated or formed with receptacles or cells sufficiently large to allow
of the free escape of or to receive the water which is expressed from tho,
peat. These pallets are to be covered with any stout but close and.

page_text: provious fabric, such for example as stout canvass, to prevent the peat
from clogging the holes in the pallets and to absorb the water more
readily. After being removed from the press the brickots or balls aro
subjected to a drying process in open sheds or in an oven heated by
steam or hot water pipes or otherwise.
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