Extracts Alcohol

1919

English Engineer Obtains Liquid Fuel From Coke.

CLEVELAND, England. — It is announced here that a local engineer has succeeded in extracting commercial alcohol from coke. It is claimed that if the process, which requires the use of gas, is applied to all the coal carbonized in Great Britain, an estimated yield of 60,000,000 gallons of motor spirits will be obtained annually, revolutionizing the supply and cost of liquid fuel.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 9.

Burning Mud

1902

Nowadays everything that will burn is interesting. A fuel works at Stangflorden, in Norway, where peat is made into a useful fuel, should be of especial interest to Massachusetts, which is said to be talking of opening up its extensive peat beds. The factory at Stangflorden is run by electricity generated by water power, and has been in operation since 1898. The chief difficulty in manufacturing fuel from peat is getting rid of the water with which it is always soaked. About eighty-five per cent, by bulk is water, and practically all of this must be removed before a satisfactory fuel is obtained. At Stangflorden the wet peat is brought to the factory in boats, from which it is removed by electric conveyors and submitted to a preliminary rough drying and pressing. The briquettes thus formed are placed in chambers, through which warm, dry air is driven, and are finally placed in electrically heated retorts, where the drying is completed.

The peat yields, besides these briquettes, tar, charcoal, creosote, sulphate of ammonia and other by products. The electric power is obtained from five eighty-kilowatt dynamos. The plant is capable of turning out 1000 centners (a centner is about 110 pounds) of air-dried peat a day. The fuel is said to burn well, yields little soot and ash and is really salable in Bergen and other towns.

Berlin Smoke Free

1902

The German Capital Has Demonstrated that Smoke Nuisance is Curable

One of the cleanest cities in the world, so far as soot and smoke are concerned, is Berlin, Germany. Although a busy manufacturing city, it is of the cleanest and best kept in Europe.

The smokeless condition of Berlin is ascribed to three facts. The preponderant use of coke and briquette, which are practically smokeless; the skillful scientific construction of boiler furnaces and chimneys, and, finally, the high standard of skill that is taught and enforced among firemen who stoke furnaces with coal for steam and manufacturing purposes.

Before a man can assume such a charge he must be taught the theory and practice of economical, scientific firing by which the coal is distributed in such a manner and quantity over the grate surface as to secure the most perfect combustion of its volatile elements.

The Silesian coal used in Berlin in most large steam plants and factories is rich in bitumen and would rank below many of the bituminous coals of the United States, and yet the long, dense, trailing clouds of smoke from mill and factory chimneys which are so familiar a sight in many American cities are rarely seen in that section of Germany, where the indiscriminate shoveling of a raw bituminous coal into the steam and other furnaces is considered an ignorant and wasteful proceeding.

Doing It Well

1900

Half-heartedness never wins in this world. If a thing is not worth doing, do not do it, is a good rule. The late Robert Louis Stevenson was always an enthusiast in whatever he undertook, even when at play.

His stepdaughter, Mrs. Isabel Strong, who was for a time his amanuensis, says that Stevenson used to maintain that no one could write a good story who was not a good player — who could not enter fully into the spirit of a game. He himself threw all his energies into whatever he might be playing.

At one time he was visiting a house where a small boy was "playing boat" on the sofa. When the lad got tired he did not wait for the ship to come to port, but got down from the sofa and walked toward the door.

Stevenson, who was watching him eagerly, cried out to him, in apparent alarm, "Oh, don't do that! Swim, at least!" — Youth's Companion.

Harvesting the Sun

1896

When we sit in front of a coal fire and enjoy its generous warmth, do we realize that the heat and light of the burning coal are really sunshine that has been stored up for ages? Such is the fact. Centuries ago the sun shone on the earth, the plants and trees grew, fell, and grew again; they were covered by geologic deposits, and acted upon by great heat and pressure, until in the course of years and ages these broad layers of organic matter were transformed into coal. The coal thus represents the work done by the sunshine years ago, and when it is burned the imprisoned solar energy is loosened again.

Our system of power production depends upon this presence of energy. But coal is a wasteful source of energy. Even the best engines do not utilize over 10 per cent of the calculated energy of the heat of coal. And, besides this it is an inconvenient thing in many ways; it has to be mined, freighted and stored. Can we not find some more economical way of using the sun's energy?

During the last few years the great progress in electrical science has enabled man to utilize the solar heat in a thriftier way. During its day's work the sun draws up a large amount of water from the oceans and damp earth. By the action of its rays plant life flourishes, and plants draw from the ground and evaporate into the air large amounts of water. Thus an oak tree of average size, with seven hundred thousand leaves, lifts from the earth into the air about one hundred and twenty-three tons of water during the five months it displays its foliage. This evaporated water, sooner or later, falls as rain, and by the action of gravity begins to flow downward. Thus the great rivers are fed. Round and round incessantly goes the water lifted by the tireless sun to fall when deserted by him, and again to fall and run seaward as long as it may exist upon this earth.


Peculiar to the Locality

Some interesting discoveries have recently been made about animal life on the Hawaiian Islands. It appears that all the land and fresh water shells are peculiar to the locality. Nor is that all. Fifty-seven out of the seventy-eight species of birds, and seven hundred out of the one thousand species of insects do not exist in any other portion of the globe.

Nature's Secrets — Possibilities of Solar Power

1920

Man gets to feeling pretty smart at times, but nature still has a great deal to teach him if she only would, says the Ohio State Journal. A scientist in the employ of the National Electric Lamp Association at its great plant in Cleveland devoted the entire season last year to studying the lightning bug in the effort to find out how that interesting creature makes light without heat. He failed to discover the secret, as had many another scientist before him.

The potential power which falls on the decks of a battleship in the sunshine of an August day, if it could be harnessed and utilized, would drive the ship vastly faster and farther in a day's journey than its great engines can drive it. The problem of harnessing presents, thus far, the insurmountable difficulty. When that is solved, as probably it will be someday, people will heat their houses with stored sunshine and gas shortages and coal strikes will be matters of perfect indifference.

Nature is jealous of her secrets, but she has grudgingly given up some and she will give up more as time goes on for she cannot resist forever the blandishments of the endless race of wooers whose hearts and intellects are concentrated upon finding out what else she knows.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, p. 6.

A Sunlight Stove — Solar Energy For Warmth or Cooking

1878

A Sunlight Stove

It has been said that when we burn coal we really warm ourselves, or cook the dinner, by the rays of the sun which fell on the earth thousands of years ago — before the Pyramids of Egypt were erected, or Cleopatra's Needle cut out of the quarry. The heat and light of past ages are stored up in another form in the coal, which is fossil vegetation that when alive, as trees or gigantic ferns, owed its growth to the sun.

A successful attempt has now been made to store up the heat of the sun's rays for immediate and practical use. It was carried out in India, where the sun is, of course, much more powerful than here. The rays were first made to pass through glass fixed an inch away from the actual apparatus, which was consequently entirely surrounded by hot air. The enclosed apparatus, a copper receptacle, was blackened outside — a color which is well known to absorb heat, as any one may prove by wearing a black coat on a warm summer's day. The heat thus retained was further assisted by a conical reflector of silvered glass, and a quantity of mutton and vegetables placed within was perfectly cooked.

To further aid in retaining the absorbed heat when the apparatus was removed from the sunlight it was covered with a rug, as ladies place a "cosy" over the teapot to draw the tea. Since then the inventor has improved upon the process, and can now cook chops or steaks in the open air as quickly as by an ordinary fire, and entirely by the sun's rays. The most remarkable point is, perhaps, that the heat is kept in the apparatus for as long as three and a half hours.

In connection with this subject, just to test the power of the sun's rays in our own country, let any of our readers on a hot summer's day place their hand on the slate roofing of an accessible shed. Where they slope to the south, the slates will be found sometimes so extremely heated that the hand can hardly bear to touch them.