| Show SMOKELESS FUELS by B H mulvihill the subject smokeless fuels is one which cannot lie le adequately handled in the space here for under that heading must be classified natural gas artificial gas fuel oil electricity anthracite coal and finally smokeless ft buels els manufactured from coal it is about these last that I 1 have been invited to talk although it is necessary that I 1 mention the others particularly in connection with your smoke nuisance problem chich aich after all is the real reason for this discussion no one questions the fact that here in this valley the smoke problem is a serious one and that something should lie be done clone to remedy conditions there is no need of me telling of the damages caused by it both to the community and the individual you all know about it and you want to know how best to get rid of the evil there is only one answer and that is the use of smokeless fuels and right here I 1 want to state that there io i no one particular smokeless fuel be it gas oil electricity or coal whose sole use would eliminate your smoke conditions nor is there any one of them suited for use under all conditions or for every purpose each of them has some particular use for which it is best fitted each necessary and undoubtedly each will lie he used it is for the con consumer to decide which is best suited tu to his particular need and the only control that your public officials can call have over the situation is in the design designing ng and en enforcing forcino b of smoke regulations which would compel the consumer to burn some smokeless fuel regardless of which lie selects now this rings brings us face to face with another very vital consideration that of your coal industry this state has been een blessed with immense and valuable bituminous coal deposits the development of which has become one of the states most important industries naturally no one who has the best interests of the community at heart desires to td cripple this industry in any way to do so would not only hurt the coal people it would directly or indirectly effect every ery individual in the state at the same time it is absurd to think that you can clean up the smoke evil as long as tile the use of raw coal is continued and the only solution as I 1 can call see it is in the treatment of the coal and its use in smokeless form I 1 previously stated that no one form of fuel was suited for every consumers need and in makin making g that statement I 1 might have added that raw coal if considered as a fuel el is the least suited of any of them except for specialized uses at the same time paradoxical as it may sound coal is the one material which can best fill every fuel condition I 1 and every consumers needs but only if you think of coal lot t as a fuel but rather as a source of raw basic product or smokeless keles fuel research engineer in paper presented fronted at recent fuel brorn lern discussion before the local section of the A 1 I M M E in in salt lake city material to be so processed and treated so that each of its constituent elements will serve its most useful eco economic purpose it ha has not been so long ago when in england and in germany it was against the law to burn coal at all and i e ven even in this country its use was frowned upon As a matter of fact the time is rapidly approaching when of it be not illegal in terms of law it most certainly will ivill be in in terms ol of economics to burn it in the barbaric wa dav v we have been accustomed to fuels gas in rny my personal opinion gas as is the ideal fuel having been reared in a district which was one of the first to adopt iia natural tural gas as I 1 know what a wonderful fuel it is artificial b gas musa must t be considered when mentioning the advantages of gas and incidentally the disadvantages gas is clean convenient efficient and easily regulated and controlled it is ideal as a fuel for cooking and household heating as well as for numerous industrial purposes but a very great number of your domestic consumers cannot afford its use as a fuel for heating and it cannot be used for locomotives A great part of your smoke problem originates from these two sources sources E electricity 1 E arri CITY E electricity lecari city is also a smokeless elss fuel whose lose advantages are well known to all it has knead one advantage over gas in that it can be used on oil locomotives but I 1 do not know of a single individual who mho uses it for household heating except for emergency or special needs FUEL OIL fuel oil is another clean efficient and easily regulated fuel with an ail adaptability for nu numerous berous uses it has come into rather widespread usage b since since the war but it is not as convenient as electricity or gas for some purposes its main draw drawback drawbacks backas as far as the domestic consumer is is concerned is in the cost of installation of the apparatus necessary for its use anthracite COALS anthracite coals are not available in this district so need not be cons considered here COKE coke enjoys considerable distribution as a domestic fuel but in general has not been accepted 1 l by the aver average acre b consumer as a desirable fuel even when available at ai prices favorable comparable with that thai of coal foi some industrial purposes however coke occupies an ail enviable position the p use of bituminous coal RAW COAL raw coal even your hi high b h volatile utah coals can be burned smokeless or nearly so under the proper conditions even by the domestic consumer but except in ill industries or power houses it is not likely to be burned smokeless even if it were possible to train every domestic consumer to do so I 1 still would not be in favol of its use as a fuel the volatiles or smoke producing L elements of coal when extracted from it are much more valuable as products byproducts by than as a source of heat generation its use in the raw state is as out of date as the use of horse drawn grawn vehicles or sailing vessels in commerce comi nerce great strides have been made in the utilization of coal by industry and there is no question but that modern generating planta achieve a high efficiency through the use of stokers smokers sto kers water jacketed boilers and through the use of powdered coal granting this and even if they were able to obtain per cent efficiency it is nevertheless a fact that if coal were first treated and the products byproducts by extracted a far greater economy would be effected distillation the treatment or distillation of coal is not a new thing for a great many years experiments have been carried on in europe as well as in this country for the purpose of economically recovering the byproducts r products of coal it was more with this idea in view that the earlier experiments were carried on and the idea of a smokeless fuel as the principal purpose of distillation has been more of an american aim particularly in recent years in order to find a substitute for the costly anthracite coals and as a method of utilizing the smaller sizes of coal the principles of coal distillation are well understood it is no longer a question of whether it can be done or what hat can be gotten from the coal it is simply a matter of mechanics or the building of machinery which will do the work in commercial quantities there are numerous processes for doing this some still in the experimental stage and some which claim to have perfected the apparatus for commercial production whether this is a fact is simply a matter of investigation METHODS there are two basic methods of distilling coal one the high temperature principle which produces semi coke char or coal and products byproducts by the first or coke making system is too well known to need mention any one interested can see a modern byproduct plant in operation at the columbia steel companas Comp anys works at ironton and will be well repaid for the time required for a visit to it the second or low temperature distillation or carbonization process differs in principle from the first or coke making one in that the coal is not subjected to as high temperatures and accordingly not so much of the volatile content is driven off for those who are not familiar with it low tempera ture lure carbonization might be defined as folloN follows vs the heat treatment of coal in the absence of air at temperatures of from F to 1350 F as distinguished from high temperature or coking carbonization at temperatures of from 1650 F to 2000 F these temperatures are used in order to prevent the decomposition of the primary tars and thus to retain the maximum yield of liquid products and at the same time obtain a smokeless fuel at temperatures of from to F about two to three times the tar yield is obtained over that of the ordinary process for making gas or coke in other words the purpose of low temperature carbonization or distillation is to remove from bituminous coal those ingredients which are smoke producing and which apon being removed as products byproducts by have a greater value as such than as fuel and at the same time produce a solid residue suited for industrial and domestic heating h abing purposes in treating the coal we do practically the same thing you do when you burn coal in your furnace at home you have noticed no doubt that when you throw fresh coal on the fire there is an immediate smoke cloud issuing from your chimney which continues for some time gradually diminishing until it is entirely gone well what is happening is that you are heat treating your coal the volatile matt matterer eror a great part of it is going up your chimney in the form of smoke and it is this same troublesome smoke which we convert into products byproducts by such as gas tar oils etc it is the conversion of these volatiles into various products which makes coal which is the source of all your smoke problems at the same time the solution of the problem I 1 the products byproducts by of coal are numerous in fact there are over a thousand items that can be made from it and if a ton of coal were converted into all its constituent or marketable products the value of them would run well over 2000 I 1 have previously stated that no one fuel would serve e every ery purpose that is true but coal and its byproducts by products can an give you every kind of fuel gas oil electricity coke and smokeless fuel for every avery purpose domestic industrial and in the form of powdered fuel now you might say this is all very interesting but why it been done before this and if it is possible why it being done here on the carbonization of coal there are certain fundamental difficulties encountered in carbonizing coal at low temperatures one of them is is transferring the heat to the coal in a reasonably short time with the low temperature gradient used coal is a poor conductor of heat it takes much longer to transfer the necessary amount of heat through a given volume of coal when the retort walls are at a given temperature of than when at 1200 C as in the usual high temperature processes therefore it becomes necessary to accelerate the i rate ate of carbonization either by spreading the crushed coal in a thin layer on a heated surface or by agitating the coal bringing fresh portions continually in contact with heated walls or by passing large volumes of hot producer gas oa products of combustion or super heated stream through the mass of broken coal handling the coal through the retorts when it reaches the plastic stage tn is also one of the t fundamental difficulties which have had to be overcome but these difficulties are well understood the processes for doing this are of various kinds some som processes use externally heated retorts sonie some internally internal y heated ones some use direct and others use indirect indirectly y ii heated abed ones some blow heated gases through the charge of of coal while some use steam and others combinations both but the underlying principle of all is the sameh heating eat ing the coal to drive off the volatiles systems f seem to be most successful are those in which the coal is first heat treated then pressed into shapes and finally given a secondary heat treatment to carbonize the briquette some processes are intermittent some continuous some soine have for their chief aini aim the production of tar products and the residue as a byproduct by product it would take me all night to try and describe them all however I 1 will try to describe briefly the type kofl process which seems to be coming into general acceptance as being the most practical type slack coal is fed continuously into a long rectangular or round horizontal externally heated retort or oven the coal is kept agitated and moving through the retort by means of a conveying mechanism during which time the volatiles or gaseous vapors are extracted by means of exhauster pumps the vapors passing b to the condensing and refining 6 apparatus where they are separated into various products as desired some processes heat the ovens with the gas produced and depending b on the type of retort have an all excess of gas which will very in quantity and quality as the coal varies an ali average excess yield as reported by the bureau of mines will run about 4 cu ft per ton toil of coal of a btu atu value of about the average tar oil yields run about 26 gallons per ton the coal having passed through the retort and being de volatilized is now in the form forin of a smokeless slack in this form it can be used as stoker fuel or for powdered coal purposes it is then passed through a grinding machine crushed to a powder and is mixed with various binders and pressed into shapes or briquettes various binders are used the most common one being the coal tar pitch which has been extracted from the coal the briquettes at this sta stage stae e are slightly smoky so they are then run through another heating ch chamber arnber and treated so as to make them s smokeless inoke less the bri b part of the systems is a standardized practice and it is really only in the primary retorting that variations occur the costs of operation will vary of course with the different processes as will the type of retort and cost of installation since coals even in the same district will vary in analysis it is apparent that every coal cannot be treated exactly alike therefore the process has to be flexible and permit of easy heat regulation smokeless fuel from coal is needed not so long ago I 1 made an investigation of one of the latest processes for the treatment of coal where they were treating coals very si to your utah coals they were treating slack coal whose market value was less than per ton toil and making a smokeless briquette which they were verc selling at per ton in addition to the briquettes they had an excess gas yield of about cu ft per ton of btu atu tu gas 2 gallons of and 11 b gallons allons of light oils the cost of treatment including the cost of the coal was about per ton and the value of the briquettes and byproducts by products approximately giving them a profit of over ver per ton toil of slack treated the machinery for this process has been standardized I 1 understand u and there is no question but that utah coals could be profitably treated by this system if a nent rf f this character were vere built in salt lake large enough to treat say 1000 tons a day which would just about take care of the domestic consumption it would certainly relieve the smoke problem to a very marked degree in addition there would be between four and five million cubic feet of very high value gas available which I 1 understand is more than enough to take care of the present consumption here in salt lake and which since it would be a byproduct by product could be sold at a very reasonable price besides this there would be about gallons of tar oils for refining the smokeless fuel produced would have all the de arable s features necessary to a good domestic and industrial fuel |
