I. eW" . , "y . . ? " v " ., s , ', . , ' 't 1 : . SzEk -: i:l a ' v... . I ;:.,' -'. 6 : ' . : . ':'.V"fl V r - II I - - - - - - - SMOKE SWIRLED DESPITE MEASURES Swirling clouds of smoke continued to blacken Salt total smoke produced by factories, railroads and Lake City skies in the '20s despite various I homes. Scientists, engineers, combustion experts smoke abatement measures proposed. Estimates I worked on the problem of smoke, attempted to placed Industry's contribution at almost half the curb menace by "sound effects' and "briquets." Aykany Plans Pail To Cut SnuoEte (Editor's note: This article Is the third In a series on the story of Salt Lake City's smoke problem: prob-lem: The causes, history and abatement measures adopted.) By WILLIAM P. McNEANT Four years after the passage of Salt Lake City's original anti-smoke anti-smoke ordnance in 1921. local industrialists in-dustrialists and engineers were still experimenting with methods of smoke abatement, in an attempt to bend the climbing curve on smoke production charts, which persisted in soaring yearly in spite of a notable start in the war against smoke. J. B. Jensen and James Evans, mining engineers, came out with an optimistic announcement concerning con-cerning their experiments with a retort which was to produce oil from the oil shales and sands that existed In Inexhaustible quantities in Utah and Colorado. Their plan was to build a plant sufficiently large to process all the coal used for heating purposes in Salt Lake City. From a ton of coal, they estimated that 40 gallons gal-lons of high-grade oil could be realized. Also, 40 of the gas generated in the process would supply sup-ply heat necessary for operations in the plant with the remainder being available) for sale to private consumers. - Furnace Device dered to equip a unit large enough to treat &00 tons of soft coal daily. A second unit was to increase the daily output to 1000 tons. The Jensen oil retort experiments were not to be discarded, however, but were to be continued with the view of setting up a by-product plant along with the "Hayes process" operation. op-eration. Machinery required to begin be-gin operations for the first 500-ton 500-ton "briquet" unit was to cost 3250,000. While most of these enthusiastic plans for reducing smoke production produc-tion were still mired in the "experimental" "ex-perimental" stages, smokestacks continued to pour out billowing blankets of soot, dirt and fumes, although a gradual reduction in dense smoke was noted during the years. I , I Issue Report A report issued in January, 1932, which covered the period from October to December of 1931, compared com-pared the dense smoke over the city with the same period for the previous year. In 1930, 109.5 minutes min-utes of dense smoke a day was recorded, which decreased to 88.7 minutes of density the next year. Smoke output was considered "dense" jwhen its volume was beyond be-yond that set at normal by the city ordinance. The Rlngelman Smoke Chart, Bee Page 18, Column 1 . jl year laier, anomtr coai-con-suming process was hailed as providing pro-viding the answer to the problem of making fire without smoke. The device, known as the Pruden syn-cronator. syn-cronator. Intended to regulate fires in furnaces, was fed with powdered pow-dered coal, and demonstrations produced no ash, soot or smoke. The "syncronator" was said to be particularly suited to large homes, apartment buildings and similar structures, and a smaller model was being manufactured for small residences. The device was operated on a principle of feeding powdered coal into the hopper of a furnace, where the coal and air combined to produce pro-duce a mixture tending to induce perfect combustion with practically practical-ly no waste. Mixing was accomplished accom-plished in the "carburetor." and the powdered coal-air mixture was burned in suspension. The flow of coal was regulated in the same manner as that of a gas burner. 1928 Briquets "Briquets" small, compact units of taxless coal first appeared ap-peared on the Salt Lake City anti-smoke anti-smoke scene in 1928, when Major B. H. Mulvthill, general manager of the Smokeless Fuel Co., announced an-nounced that the "purified lumps" would be available for Salt Lakers Lak-ers within three months. Following Follow-ing an inspection of more than 20 carbonization plants and machinery machin-ery throughout the country, Major Mulvlhlll announced the "Hayes process," an operation successful in the east was to be adopted at the local plant, with . machinery or- " tn Many Plans Have Failed To Reduce S. L. Smoke positlve method of settling the problem, and Salt Lakers were more and more of the opinion that such a method was beyond reach. Like the ever-present encircling mountains, which formed the biggest big-gest contributing factor in keeping keep-ing the city enveloped in a dark smoke cloud, the smoke seemed here to stay a nuisance, perhaps, but also a symbol of the city's still-growing, still-growing, healthy industrialism. Continued from Local Page published by the U. S. geological survey, waa used as the standard of comparison in grading the density of smoke, according to a stipulation Included In the city ordinance. The decrease waa doubly encouraging encour-aging In view of the fact that In 1931. 418 new coal plants, In all classifications, were Installed in the city. In the same year, 410 new natural gas heating plants were also Installed. "Smoke Is costing Salt Lake City from 11,500.000 to $4,500,000 annually,' editorial observers noted In the early 1930s. City officials, by now ready to . try anything that- might reduce th smoke, and ward off insistent demands for better results from taxpaylng citisena, hardly raised ' an Incredulous eyebrow when they' heard of a plan to rid the city of moke by means of "sound waves." a- av cw aucsa The idea came from H. W. St Clair, a U. S. bureau of mines metallurgist, who wrote to explain that he had invented a device to clean out chimneys and smokestacks smoke-stacks with sound-wave vibrations. The 8t Clair method wss intended in-tended to psss amoks or fumes through a tube in which standing sound waves were established. "Supersonic" sound waves, above normal hearing range, were to do the trick. Taking a somewhat more sober grip on the situation, the state, in 1937. appropriated (23,000 to the Vtah Conservation and Research foundation for the twofold pur-' pur-' pose of freeing the city of smoke and perfecting a method of conserving con-serving coal while producing a amokeless fuel One of the earliest results came when La C Karrick, a former refinery re-finery engineer and fuels technologist technolo-gist for the bureau of mines, perfected per-fected techniques which were applied ap-plied to experiments on the heavy oil content of Utah's bituminous coal Karrick announced his experiments experi-ments showed that a ton of raw bituminous coal, processed by his methods, would yield a maximum of 1400 pounds of amokeless fuel A maximum of 3000 cubic feet of gas and about 86 gallons of crude oil would come from the same ton. The amount of soot, tar, carbin and ash thrown off would be less than 1 of that thrown off by raw coal. It was claimed. By-product Loaa Meanwhile, In the realisation that a concerted smoke-abatement program could be carried on only with financial backing, editorial observers called for an annual city appropriation of $20,000 to $23,000, - to be Included In . the budget, to cover experimental work and pay the salaries of qualified engineers. Over 20 years of struggle . against smoke had produced no