Scientific American Supplement, No. 561 | Page 8

reasoning and the failure to discuss a certain mechanical fact connected with the combination of gases in the process of combustion. He said: "What is the use of heating the air put into a furnace? If you take a cubic foot of air, it contains just so many atoms of oxygen, neither more nor less. If the air be heated, you cause it to assume double its volume, but you have not added a single atom of oxygen, and you will require twice the space for its passage between the grate bars, and twice the space in the furnace, which is a nuisance; but if the air could be frozen, it would be condensed, and more atoms of oxygen could be crowded into the cubic foot, and the fire would receive a corresponding advantage." Mr. Williams proceeded upon this theory, and died without solving the perplexing mystery of as frequent failure as success which attended his experiments with steamship boilers. The only successes which he obtained were misleading, because they were made with boilers so badly proportioned for their work that almost any change would produce benefit.
Successful combustion requires something more than the necessary chemical elements of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, for it requires something to cook the elements, so to speak, and that is heat, and for this reason: When the coal is volatilized in the furnace, what would be a cubic foot of gas, if cold, is itself heated and its volume increased to double its normal proportion. It is thin and attenuated. The cold air which is introduced to the furnace is denser than the gas. With dampers wide open in the chimney, and the gases and air passing into the flues with a velocity of 40 feet per second, they strike the colder surface of the tubes, and are cooled below the point of combustion before they have had time to become assimilated; and although an opponent in a debate upon steam boiler tests once stated that his thermometer in the chimney showed only 250 degrees, and indicated that all the value that was practical had been obtained from the coal, I took the liberty to maintain that a chemist might have analyzed the gases and shown there were dollars in them; and that if the thermometer had been removed from the chimney and placed in the pile of coal outside the boiler, it would have gone still lower; but it would not have proved the value to have been extracted from the coal, for it was not the complete test to apply.
The condition of things in the furnace may be illustrated thus: If we should mingle a quart of molasses and a gallon of water, it would require considerable manipulation and some time to cause them to unite. Why? Because one element is so much denser than the other; but if we should mix a quart of the gallon of water with the quart of molasses, and render their densities somewhere near the density of the remaining water, and then pour the masses together, there would be a more speedy commingling of the two. And so with the furnace. I have always maintained that every furnace should be lined with fire-brick, in order that it shall be so intensely hot when the air enters that the air shall instantly be heated to the same degree of tenuity as the hot gases themselves, and the two will then unite like a flash--and that is heat. And here is the solution of the Wye Williams mystery of failure when cold air was introduced upon the top of a fire to aid combustion. The proof of the necessity for heat to aid the chemical assimilation of the volatilized coal elements is seen in starting a fire in a common stove. At first there is only a blue flame, in which the hand may be held; but wait until the lining becomes white hot, and then throw on a little coal, and you will find a totally different result. It is also seen in the Siemens gas furnace, with which you are doubtless familiar. There is the introduction of gas with its necessary complement of air. Until the furnace and retorts become heated, the air and gas flutter through only partially united, and do little good; but as soon as the retorts and furnace become thoroughly hot, the same gas and air will melt a fire-brick.
These are common phenomena, which are familiar, but apt to be unnoticed; but they logically point to the truth that no furnaces should present a cooling medium in contact with fuel which is undergoing this process of digestion, so to speak. It will be very evident, I think, from these facts that water-legs in direct contact with a fire are a mistake. They tend