impact of the flame, and D is a lining of fire-brick at the back of the combustion-box, also intended to protect the plating from the direct impact of the petroleum flame. The arrangement of the furnace on the Meyer system is shown in fig. 5, where E is an annular projection built at the mouth of the furnace, and BB are spiral passages for heating the air before it passes into the furnace. Fig. 6 shows the rings CC and details of the casting which forms the projection or exterior elongation of the furnace. The brickwork arrangement adopted for the double-ended boilers on the Hamburg-American Steamship Company’s “Ferdinand Laeisz” is represented in fig. 7. The whole furnace is lined with fire-brick, and the burner is mounted upon a circular disk plate which covers the mouth of the furnace. The oil is injected not by steam pulverization, but by pressure due to a steam-pump. The oil is heated to about 60°C. before entering the pump, and further heated to 90°C. after leaving the pump. It is then filtered, and passes to the furnace injector C at about 30-℔ pressure; and its passage through this injector and the spiral passages of which it consists pulverizes the oil into spray, in which form it readily ignites on reaching the interior of the furnace. The injector is on the Körting principle, that is, it atomizes by fracture of the liquid oil arising from its own momentum under pressure. The advantage of this system as compared with the steam-jet system is the saving of fresh water, the abstraction of which is so injurious to the boiler by the formation of scale.
The general arrangement of the fuel tanks and filling pipes on the ss. “Murex” is shown in fig. 8; and fig. 9 represents the furnace gear of the same vessel, A being the steam-pipe, B the oil-pipe, C the injector, D the swivel upon which the injector is hung so that it may be swung clear of the furnace, E the fire-door, and F the handle for adjusting the injector. In fig. 10, which represents a section of the furnace, H is a fire-brick pier and K a fire-brick baffling bridge.
It is found in practice that to leave out the fire-bars ordinarily used for coal produces a better result with liquid fuel than the alternative system of keeping them in place and protecting them by a layer of broken fire-brick.
Boilers fitted upon all the above systems have been run for thousands of miles without trouble. In new construction it is desirable to give larger combustion chambers and longer and narrower boiler tubes than in the case of boilers intended for the combustion of coal alone. (F. F.*)
Gaseous Fuel.
Strictly speaking, much, and sometimes even most, of the heating effected by solid or liquid fuel is actually performed by the gases given off during the combustion. We speak, however, of gaseous fuel only in those cases where we supply a combustible gas from the outset, or where we produce from ordinary solid (or liquid) fuel in one place a stream of combustible gas which is burned in another place, more or less distant from that where it has been generated.
The various descriptions of gaseous fuel employed in practice may be classified under the following heads:
I. Natural Gas.
II. Combustible Gases obtained as by-products in various technical operations.
III. Coal Gas (Illuminating Gas).
IV. Combustible Gases obtained by the partial combustion of coal, &c.
I. Natural Gas.—From time immemorial it has been known that in some parts of the Caucasus and of China large quantities of gases issue from the soil, sometimes under water, which can be lighted and burn with a luminous flame. The “eternal fires” of Baku belong to this class. In coal-mines frequently similar streams of gas issue from the coal; these are called “blowers,” and when they are of somewhat regular occurrence are sometimes conducted away in pipes and used for underground lighting. As a regular source of heating power, however, natural gas is employed only in some parts of the United States, especially in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Ohio and West Virginia, where it always occurs in the neighbourhood of coal and petroleum fields. The first public mention of it was made in 1775, but it was not till 1821 that it was turned to use at Fredonia, N.Y. In Pennsylvania natural gas was discovered in 1859, but at first very little use was made of it. Its industrial employment dates only from 1874, and became of great importance about ten years later. Nobody ever doubted that the gas found in these localities was an accumulation of many ages and that, being tapped by thousands of bore-holes, it must rapidly come to an end. This assumption was strengthened by the fact that the “gas-wells,” which at first gave out the gas at a pressure of 700 or 800, sometimes even of 1400 ℔ per sq. in., gradually showed a more and more diminishing pressure and many of them ceased to work altogether. About the year 1890 the belief was fairly general that the stock of natural gas would soon be entirely exhausted. Indeed, the value of the annual production of natural gas in the United States, computed as its equivalent of coal, was then estimated at twenty-one million dollars, in 1895 at twelve millions, in 1899 at eleven and a half millions. But the output rose again to a value of twenty-seven millions in 1901, and to fifty million dollars in 1907. Mostly the gas, derived from upwards of 10,000 gas-wells, is now artificially compressed to a pressure of 300 or 400 ℔ per sq. in. by means of steam-power or gas motors, fed by the gas itself, and is conveyed over great distances in iron pipes, from 9 or 10 to 36 in. in diameter. In 1904 nearly 30,000 m. of pipe lines were in operation. In 1907 the quantity of natural gas consumed in the United States (nearly half of which was in Pennsylvania) was 400,000 million cub. ft., or nearly 3 cub. m. Canada (Ontario) also produces some natural gas, reaching a maximum of about $746,000 in 1907.
The principal constituent of natural gas is always methane, CH4, of which it contains from 68.4 to 94.0% by volume. Those gases which contain less methane contain all the more hydrogen, viz. 2.9 to 29.8%. There is also some ethylene, ethane and carbon monoxide, rarely exceeding 2 or 3%. The quantity of incombustible gases—oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen—ranges from mere traces to about 5%. The density is from 0.45 to 0.55. The heating power of 1000 cub. ft. of natural gas is equal to from 80 to 120 ℔, on the average 100 ℔, of good coal, but it is really worth much more than this proportion would indicate, as it burns completely, without smoke or ashes, and without requiring any manual labour. It is employed for all domestic and for most industrial purposes.
The origin of natural gas is not properly understood, even now. The most natural assumption is, of course, that its formation is connected with that of the petroleum always found in the same neighbourhood, the latter principally consisting of the higher-boiling aliphatic hydrocarbons of the methane series. But whence do they both come? Some bring them into connexion with the formation of coal, others with the decomposition of animal remains, others with that of diatomaceae, &c., and even an inorganic origin of both petroleum and natural gas has been assumed by chemists of the rank of D. I. Mendeléeff and H. Moissan.
II. Gases obtained as By-products.—There are two important cases in which gaseous by-products are utilized as fuel; both are intimately connected with the manufacture of iron, but in a very different way, and the gases are of very different composition.
(a) Blast-furnace Gases.—The gases issuing from the mouths of blast-furnaces (see Iron and Steel) were first utilized in 1837 by Faber du Faur, at Wasseralfingen. Their use became more extensive after 1860, and practically universal after 1870. The volume of gas given off per ton of iron made is about 158,000 cub. ft. Its percentage composition by volume is:
| Carbon monoxide | 21.6 | to | 29.0, | mostly | about | 26 | % |
| Hydrogen | 1.8 | ” | 6.3, | ” | ” | 3 | % |
| Methane | 0.1 | ” | 0.8, | ” | ” | 0.5 | % |
| Carbon dioxide | 6 | ” | 12, | ” | ” | 9.5 | % |
| Nitrogen | 51 | ” | 60, | ” | ” | 56 | % |
| Steam | 5 | ” | 12, | ” | ” | 5 | % |
| 100 | % | ||||||
There is always a large amount of mechanically suspended
