New Gork State College of Agriculture At Gornell University Sthaca, N. Y. Library Cornell University Library TAT Bulletin 16 DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF MINES JOSEPH A. HOLMES, Director THE USES OF PEA FOK FUEL AND OTHER: PURPOSES BY CHARLES A. DAVIS WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1911 CONTENTS. Ta GEO GUC EL OB oc ccecv oe caady oe esate ete rclctetcten tet ct dee bine ta ata a RU Reino em eee Scope and purpose of report..........- Definition of peat............--2.-..-- General properties of peat....-...-.--- Brief history of the use of peat as a fuel..............--.---------------- Present interest..............---- Peat deposits in the United States..... Quantity of peat available........- Distribution of deposits..........- Résumés. sesscgesasyeneess iayaedenes Comparative cost of peat and coal as fuel........-...-.---2-----2---- Relative value of peatdttel . 22. c.eic shed ss ssiec Gas aces uaebe Origin and formation of peat.........-.--.- Necessary climatic and surface conditions.............-...-2-.-2-.-.-2-. Regions in North America favorable for the formation of peat...-.....-.--- Conditions favoring the growth of plants.............22.-.-222.--2--2------ Plant deposits in depressions filled with water..........-.....2.-2-22.----- Aquatic: plants cssce Lyons, R. E., Thirty-first Ann. Rept. Ind. Dept. Geology and Nat. Hist., 1906, p. 102, ¢U.S, Geol. Survey Bull, No. 332. 62 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. obtained from actual boiler tests, and the number of pounds of water evaporated at 212° F. per pound of fuel used was calculated sepa- rately for each test. Fuel tests made by the United States Geological Survey at St. Louis, 1906-7. Pounds of water evap- orated at 212° F., per feet pound of— cece rin No. Source of fuel. Type of fuel. fuel as Dry fuel | Fuelas | fred. used. fired 386 | Florida.........--.-- Compressed or machine peat.......... 6.04 5.00 17.21 410 | Alabama -| Bituminous coal. ....--- 9.00 8. 69 3.43 294 | Arkansas ol Cee eo 8.84 8.35 5.55 340 |..... oO 2] LAGI oro creciarsis 5.86 3.59 38.75 Tlinois Bituminous coal 8.40 7.67 8.72 432 | Indiana pi roreverezatticrer 8.60 8.02 12.79 311 | Kansas (0 (0 epee ee 7.88 7.23 8.28 462 | Kentucky do.. 8.61 7.92 8.04 486 | Missouri.......-.-..].-.-. OO). cA ceacchoriodaateniasd aekehcecen 5. 66 6. 36 4.51 B69: Ohio: i ccoeeaavedsles Oi Sweistecece susp eeaitiessaceeek 9.28 8.90 4.10 467 | Pennsylvania.....-|..... WO wiccraracarstaws statsiacnianeeeeadasignes 10. 04 9.65 3.90 510 |....- Dene ciectesitczacinlaceete DO rast arcs aisisieisrsyectararartetrnaiesicieteriavainie 8.92 8.46 5.15 401 | Rhode Island...... Graphitic anthracite. .........-.---.-- 4.93 4,81 2.33 291) TeKass cieeewesese ignites sececonericun stance eee 6.90 4.40 36.27 476') Virginie... .2c2..0 ccs Anthracite (pea coal).....-.-...--..-- 7.83 7.46 4.73 290 ashington........ Subbituminous coal...........-.-...-- 7.44 6.25 15.96 This comparison includes only a single specimen of peat, used for a comparatively short time, and of necessity prevents the reaching of any general conclusions of value, but the confirmation which it gives to other estimates of the relative value of peat is striking. The coal samples used for the tests were generally run-of-mine, carload lots, shipped under the inspection of the United States Geological Survey, and tested under known conditions. The table shows that slightly more than 60 per cent as much water per pound was evaporated from the peat as from the best sample of bituminous coal cited, when considered on the water-free basis, and 51.8 per cent as much per pound when compared ‘‘as fired.”” On the other hand, the figures are 90.7 and 75.5 per cent when comparison is made with the poorest of the bituminous coals or, for the average of the 10 samples listed, 70 per cent for the water-free fuels, and 61.5 per cent for the fuels as fired. The peat gave better results than the graphitic anthracite from Rhode Island, which evaporated only 81.4 per cent as much water on the dry and 96 per cent as much on the ‘‘as fired” basis. Compared with the pea-size Virginia anthracite, the peat was 77 per cent as valuable ‘‘as fired.” The subbituminous coal from Washington evaporated about 20 per cent more water than the peat in each form of statement. In the case of the lignites, the sample from Texas was 13 per cent better as dry fuel, but its large percentage of moisture reduced its yalue to 88 per cent of that of the peat as fired; that from Arkansas USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 63 had 97 per cent of the value of the peat on the dry basis and about 72 per cent as fired. The peat used was of good quality, as shown by the accompanying proximate analysis: Proximate chemical analysis of Florida No. 1 peat. [Used in steaming test 386.] Moisture: csiicwen oi gandieit ek eece eens a4 eal dade 17. 21 Volatile: matter: ais .cccuceiilel ula genera od. on bhai a peeeeaccem 51. 01 HIx6d: CAPD OD csnivscve-trcoonaustuncd imum ee aaa eee imate 24. 85 NSD aiiek Seas arc asierene erase as aagaaeese rate pote ieee ase ea eet 6. 93 SUIPRUP iat suisse epictekmewinehanaaiitnnaninss eeee eyes chr ex enews 49 Bit. Us per pound of dry fuel oscccretae ses e se heees eee eeusceu se 10, 082 In a preliminary report? of the steaming test with peat on which this discussion is based, the statement is made that ‘‘No difficulty was encountered in keeping the boiler up to its rated capacity, and in fact during the four hours’ run the percentage of rated horsepower of the boiler developed was 113.2. The amount of peat burned per indicated horsepower hour at the steam engine was 5.66 pounds, and per electrical horsepower hour at the switchboard was 6.98 pounds. The principal difficulty in the utilization of peat under boilers appears to be the frequency with which it must be fired. On account of the lightness of the material and also on account of its rapid combustion the fireman was kept at work almost constantly during the test.” IMPROVEMENTS PROBABLE. There are strong probabilities that with more experience with peat fuel, and consequent better adjustment of the drafts and slight modification of the fire box, the difficulties mentioned above would have been largely obviated, and at the same time a somewhat smaller consumption of fuel would have been obtained with no material decrease in the efficiency of the boiler. These probabilities are strongly supported by the statements of users of peat who have given it prolonged trial for boiler use; they state that it requires much less draft than coal. A fire of peat is claimed to raise steam in a boiler in about one-half the time taken by a coal fire; the fire is said to be lasting, nearly or quite smokeless and to make a very light, powdery ash, which does not fuse readily, if at all, so that there are no clinkers produced. Further claim is made that no unconsumed fuel is left as cinders either in the fire box or in the ash pit. Because the com- bustion is complete, no soot is deposited, and by reason of the small percentage of sulphur present in the fresh-water peats, scaling and other forms of corrosion of grate bars, fire box, and boiler are reduced to a minimum; the boiler flues are generally left entirely without any aU.8. Geol. Survey Bull. No. 290, p. 135. (Now out of print.) 661°—Bull. 16—11 5 64 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. form of deposit except, in rather unusual cases, a small quantity of very powdery ash. The lightness of the peat makes it the most easily handled of all solid fuels, and it can be placed on the fire exactly where needed. ACTION OF VOLATILE HYDROCARBONS. As has been noted, the volatile hydrocarbons of peat are not driven off as black smoke, as are those of bituminous coal, but are consumed in the fire box above the fuel bed, thus quickly giving a high tempera- ture; by this means steam is generated rapidly and the supply is maintained by the slower combustion of the fixed carbon of the fuel bed. The actual efficiency of peat when properly fired in a well- designed fire box, as compared with the theoretical calorific value, is apparently greater than would be expected, because of its ready ignition, complete combustion, as well as its freedom from cinders, clinkers, sparks, soot, smoke, and deposition of heat-absorbing com- pounds on the fire box and in the boiler flues. On the other hand, coal yields a large amount of ash and soot, which clog the flues, and corrosive gases, which cover the boiler and any metal surfaces with which they come in contact with a constantly thickening incrustation of rust; a considerable percentage of the good coal fails to burn, and the fusible character of the ash makes slag and clinkers a constant source of annoyance as well as loss of heat. These factors reduce the efficiency of most kinds of coal more than is commonly appreciated, because each lowers the steam-generating power of the fuel and lessens by so much its theoretical superiority over peat in ordinary boiler practice. Even if the truth of these comparisons were not apparent, some sacrifices of heating value could seemingly be tolerated in view of the smokeless feature of peat combustion as compared with the constantly mcreasing losses of the public from damage to and defacement of property and probable injury to health directly traceable to the smoke of bituminous coal. PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE OF PEAT FUEL. ESSENTIAL PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. The preceding sections of this paper have discussed at length the occurrence and origin of peat and those of its qualities which appear to be of most importance relative to its value as fuel, and which need to be taken into account in making it into a marketable fuel on a large scale. Before such production can be made commercially successful on any scale, however, other factors than those pertaining solely to the properties of peat and its fitness for specific use must be considered. Some of these are presented here as preliminary to the more technical part of the paper, because the success or failure of all attempts to make any product from peat must be based upon them, and because they are so often overlooked or deliberately ignored by those about to enter upon or promote the manufacture of peat products. The need of such a discussion is emphasized by a glance at the history of the numerous attempts at peat-fuel manufacture that have been made in the United States during the last 50 years. Large sums of money, aggregating many hundreds of thousands of dollars, have been spent upon such ventures, yet practically no financial returns have been received from them by their supporters. These facts are so well known in some sections of the country where there are numerous peat deposits that a large part of the conservative investing public can no longer be interested in any enterprise based on peat utilization, no matter how attractively it may be presented. This section of the report is designed to show that causes which are avoidable have been chiefly responsible for the losses and failures of peat enterprises of the past—not a lack of desirable qualities existing primarily in the peat itself and in the products made from it. ERRORS THAT HAVE CAUSED PAST FAILURES. To state the matter simply, the study of unsuccessful peat-fuel plants in this country, and an analysis of their history, emphasizes the fact that a number of important matters must be taken into account before any peat bog can be made the source of a paying busi- ness, even when the peat is of good quality, and can be shown to be 65 66 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. valuable fuel if rightly treated. It seems clearly obvious from such examination that much of the lack of success observed has been due to failure to take such factors into account, to ignorance of their existence, or to too great optimism when they were under considera- tion. IGNORANCE AND INEXPERIENCE. The most important single group of such errors may be charged, perhaps, to ignorance and inexperience. Ignorance is not excus- able, however, since there is a very considerable mass of literature in nearly every European language, which details at length records of the theoretical and business experience gained during more than a hundred years of experiments. Although these experimental data have been gathered under economic conditions differing somewhat from those in America, the difference is not so great that the results can not be made applicable here; to entirely overlook or throw them aside is to invite failure when success might almost as easily be attained. For example, much greater progress could be made in a given time by taking the best types of European machinery and proc- esses for manufacturing peat and improving them than by begin- ning anew and working out similar ones independently. Large sums of money and much disappointment would also be saved. FAULTY ENGINEERING. Many of the difficulties which have been encountered in peat utili- zation in the United States, as well as some of the failures, may be attributed to what may be termed “faulty engineering.”” Under this head may be grouped mistakes made in choosing sites for the erection of plants; poor planning and erection; unwise selection of the kind of product to be made and the way to make it; the choice of inefficient machinery by which it is to be made; and even in imperfect pros- pecting, surveying, and proving up peat bogs. There have also come to the attention of the writer many cases in which certain fundamental business considerations seemingly have been ignored or overlooked, thus predestining the ultimate collapse of the enterprises. As the results of overlooking or neglecting these factors have been observed in many parts of the country, persons who, without previous experience, are considering investment in some form of peat utiliza- tion, may be helped by a brief statement of some of the economic and related principles that must govern the founding and successful growth of any business that has the use of peat as a basis. Atten- tion may in this way be directed to some of the dangers of loss which may be encountered as the result of inexperience. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 67 FACTORS GOVERNING PROFITABLE UTILIZATION OF PEAT DEPOSITS. MARKET. One of the first objections which is raised against the use of peat for fuel is the one made by economists and others that the country is already so well supplied with good fuel in other forms, such as wood, coal, oil, and gas, that there will be no sale for peat; they contend, a priori, that there will be no market for peat fuel; hence investigation of its possibilities is useless. The market is rightly considered to be the most important factor and the one upon which the fate of any peat development must hinge, for unless the product of an industry finds a ready sale at prices which will meet all costs, maintain the the plant, and give a profit on the capital invested, there can be no permanence to it—in fact, no industry. At first thought, any desirable type of fuel, would seemingly find a ready sale at good prices, but more careful consideration will raise the question as to whether a substance like peat, which is quite un- known and untried in most American fuel markets, will be accepted by any number of buyers until they have learned by experience that it nay be depended upon. Experience shows that most people are conservative in adopting new materials in place of those which they have long known and have found satisfactory. The conclusion may be drawn, therefore, that the market for any form of peat, as for other new materials, must generally be won by slow and persistent effort, in which a first-rate product, skillful manufacture, careful advertising, and constant demonstration must be combined. The important markets for fuel are located in the larger towns and cities; hence a peat-fuel factory should be situated where one or more large centers of population and manufacture can be worked up for a market. It must be remembered, however, that the fuel trade in such places is thoroughly and closely organized, and therefore opposition must be expected to any new and independent product. This opposi- tion, if effective, will result in reduced sales, in lower prices, and obviously in smaller profits during the stage while competition from these agencies is active. A good market, then, generally must be built up. Not less than five years after peat fuel is put on a given market would probably be needed for it to find its proper place among other fuels. At the end of the period peat could hardly be expected to form more than 10 per cent of the entire quantity of fuel used for all purposes in the region surrounding the proposed plant. Conversely, time is needed in all new manufacturing enterprises to get the plant to a stage where its efficiency permits other than slow and expensive production. This period of development ought to be 68 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. the time when a market is being secured and established so that the product as fast as it can be made will be taken at fair prices, and so that as soon as a full and satisfactory output is attained the whole of it can be sold with profit. So far as can be seen at present, or can be judged from European experience, it will not be feasible to send peat fuel long distances by rail. Indeed, the closer to a good market that it can be produced, the more certain will be the chances of success. The abundance and prices of other kinds of fuel, the means of transportation, the attitude of the transportation companies, the conservatism of the population, and the way in which the peat is prepared will all be factors in deter- mining the maximum distance that can be reached by a given peat- fuel factory. This maximum distance will presumably be less than 50 miles for a long time after the factory has reached a productive stage. The market within this radius can be secured only by making a uniform product with enough good qualities to displace fuels which have been known long before the time of its introduction. The peat must be fairly and honestly shown to be really desirable, and the more honestly the demonstration is made the more profitable will be the final outcome. TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES. It will probably not be possible for a long time in the future to utilize as a source of fuel peat bogs that are unfavorably located in respect to lines of railroad already built, or to water routes, such as rivers, lakes, and canals. The possible exception lies in bogs which may be utilized by producer-gas plants where the peat is converted into electric energy at the bog, or into fuel gas that may be conveyed by pipe lines to the places where it is to be used. Both of these uses are quite practicable, but are likely to be slowly developed, because of the conservatism of capital in taking up entirely new lines of investment. It is important, therefore, to be assured that good transportation lines to the site chosen for a peat-fuel plant are already in existence, or will be before the plant is built. The cost of every item is so much increased where teaming is necessary, that, except on a very small scale, a plant can not be established and brought to a successful production with this sort of transportation. The limit to which the finished peat fuel can be drawn by horses and sold at a profit is easily deter- mined when the cost of production is added to other charges, includ- ing the cost of men and teams, and subtracted from the selling price. Failure to secure steam or water transportation to the factory has obviously been the cause of failure of a very considerable number of peat-fuel plants, either before they were fully developed or soon afterwards. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 69 LOCATION. Closely connected with the factors which have been mentioned is that of choice of location of a bog on which to establish peat opera- tions. Too much importance can scarcely be attached to this, as the success of the enterprise depends not so much upon the quantity of peat to be manufactured as upon the cost of production and market- ing as compared with the price at which sales can be made. Clearly, therefore, a small, favorably located bog is preferable for experimental exploitation to a large one remote from market, transportation lines, and cheap labor supply. The margin of profit on the finished product of any type of peat- fuel plant will be so small, because of the low price at which it must be sold in competition with coal and wood, that no extra charges should be placed on its production by a choice of location that will entail a high cost for labor and maintenance, and slow, uncertain, and expensive transportation to market. The greed that urges the promotors of projected enterprises to get the largest possible quantity of raw material may blind them to the handicaps caused by its location, and thus bring the entire investment to a disastrous end. AVAILABLE CAPITAL AND QUANTITY OF PEAT. An estimate of the life of the plant, its size, and consequently the amount of money invested, must be determined by the total quan- tity of good peat in the bog selected for exploitation; hence an ap- proximately accurate knowledge of how much peat can be had is essential before other plans are made, especially if the deposit is of small area and depth. If it is very large, the need of care in this respect is not so great as when the quantity is clearly limited; in all cases, however, sufficiently exact tests should be made to insure the fact that the projected investment is justified by the quantity of good raw material available. The prosperity of the enterprise and the returns from the invest- ment will depend upon the salability of the output and the reputa- tion which it wins among fuel consumers. These, in turn, must be based upon the quality of the peat, its fuel value, structure, ash con- tent, and the kind of fuel that it makes. In considerable measure, also, some of these factors control the cost of production, because upon them depends the ease and consequent cheapness with which the peat can be dug and made ready for market. PRACTICAL METHOD OF COMPUTATION. The quantity of peat in a given deposit may be determined with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes by finding its total area 70 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. and average depth, and assuming that at least 200 tons of air-dry machine peat can be made per acre for each foot in depth. Some heavy types of peat will yield more than this, and the figure is seem- * ingly conservative for American peats, which in practice generally give a dense, heavy product. SMALLEST WORKABLE SIZE OF BOG. So many erroneous ideas have been expressed as to the lower limit of size of bogs that may be used for making peat fuel that the follow- ing illustration is cited to show that in Europe bogs of small size are used even where considerable investments are made. At Skabersjé, Sweden, a producer-gas plant equipped for generating electricity, and costing several thousands of dollars, has been erected at a. peat deposit 37 acres in area and averaging 5 feet deep. The life of the plant is estimated at 30 years at the present rate of consumption of fuel, of which there is estimated to be 44,500 tons available. There are other bogs in the neighborhood which may be used after the one now in use is exhausted, but none is of great size. The plant develops 300 horsepower. The illustration mentioned indicates that small deposits of peat of small average depth will justify exploitation if the plans formed are not too ambitious, as the annual production of 1,000 or 1,500 tons of peat fuel can be assured for a long period of years from such bogs as the one cited. Such a quantity may be sufficient to furnish all that will be taken by a good-sized community for several years after a plant is built. It should also be taken into account that a number of years would probably elapse before so large an output could be made by the plant or be taken by local markets. There are many small towns in the northern United States near which are sufficiently large beds of peat to supply electric current for many years for lighting and other uses. Likewise, power for fac- tories and mines—where now the fuel used is coal shipped by rail from distant mines—might be cheaply obtained from near-by peat beds. The physical properties of the peat beds under consideration should be such that the raw material may be easily dug and easily and rapidly put into the desired form of product with the chosen machinery. If condensed or machine peat to be shipped from bog to market by rail is the product decided upon, the peat should not be very fibrous or woody. ‘These qualities, however, do not reduce its value so much for local use, except as stumps and other remains of trees increase the cost of digging, which in most cases will be small per ton of final product. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 71 METHODS OF PROSPECTING PEAT BOGS AND ESTIMATING THEIR CONTENTS. Peat beds of large area and considerable average depth are rather rare in the United States, and where they do occur are often so located with respect to lines of transportation or to markets that they could not be used at present except for the production of gas for power generation. Bogs of this class need little careful prospect- ing, as the quantity of peat in them is very large, and ordinary errors in the relation of the estimated quantity to that actually present may be disregarded when a quantity of material sufficient to warrant exploitation is known to be present. There is greater need of carefully testing bogs of small area, and the cost of doing this is relatively small. After the area has been found by an ordinary land survey, a series of parallel, uniformly spaced lines should be laid out at right angles to the long axis of the bog and entirely across its surface. Along the lines test holes to the bottom of the deposit should be made to determine its varia- tions in depth. The intervals between the holes should be of the same length, and in final proving up should be dug as deep as possi- ble with a spade or post-hole digger. An earth auger with an open spiral or a ship auger of similar construction may be welded to a sec- tion of half-inch gas pipe, and used for sounding the depth and for taking from below the surface samples for chemical analysis. If the tool is to be used often, 3 or 4 foot lengths of pipe, provided at one end with a carefully fitted coupling and at the other with a thread which fits the coupling, will be found convenient. The coupling may be fastened to the pipe by a pin which prevents its unscrewing from that piece when another section is joined to it. The chief objection to the use of the auger lies in the fact that in deep deposits the sample taken at a considerable depth may be stripped from the auger as it is drawn up and may be replaced by the material through which it is drawn, so that the origin of the sample may be doubtful. A much more exact tool is one devised by the author and used by him with great satisfaction for several seasons. The essential part of this tool is a stout brass tube about a foot long and seven-eighths of an inch in inside diameter. The lower edge of the tube is sharp- ened, and inside the upper end is closely fitted and riveted a shoulder or ring of brass one-sixteenth of an inch thick to serve as a stop for the piston and catch. Inside the cylinder is a brass piston of three- fourths inch rod accurately fitting the opening in the upper part of the tube and bushed out at the lower end by a ring of brass to fit the cylinder. This lower end of the piston is slotted on one side, and in the slot’is fastened a brass spring catch which automatically locks 42 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. when thepistonis drawn up and out of thecylinder. A metal peg driven through a hole in the piston at the proper distance from its upper end and at right angles to its long axis prevents its being pushed out of the cylinder at the outlet end. The whole tool can be quickly and firmly fastened to a rod of gas pipe by a screw thread in the upper end of the piston. When used, this tool is pushed down into the peat the required distance, with the plunger filling the cylinder. A sample is taken by drawing up the rod and the attached piston until the catch is heard to lock at the top of the cylinder, after which the cylinder is pushed down into the peat about its own length. This action fills it unless the peat is very wet or very hard. After it is full it may be drawn to the surface without danger of loss or of mixing with the over- lying material. The inclosed sample may then be pushed from the cylinder by unlocking and pushing in the piston. By using this tool carefully and thoroughly the depth and character of any peat bed may be accurately learned with a relatively small expenditure of time and labor. Only by digging with a shovel, however, can be had the large-sized samples that ought to be used in final tests. The large samples are more satisfactory for examination and may give more characteristic results than those taken with the testing tool described. BOGS LYING BELOW THE GROUND-WATER LEVEL OR CONTAINING MARL. Small and medium sized bogs which fill deep depressions below the ground-water level, like lake basins, may be expected to have open water or a layer of very watery peat below the thick, firm turf that forms the upper 3 or 4 feet of the bog upon which large trees may grow. Where such watery deposits occur they must be examined with unusual care, because the amount of water may occupy so much of the basin that the peat could not be worked profitably. In one such basin in Michigan, where the turf supported a growth of trees and was so strong that a railroad was built upon it entirely across the basin, more than 60,000 cubic yards of earth were used to give the track stability after the traffic had become so heavy that the turf would no longer support the weight of the grade, tracks, and train. Manifestly, this bulk of earth would fill only a small part of the space occupied by water and watery peat in that basin which hasty or inefficient testing would have determined to be filled with compact peat. The possible occurrence of marl should also be watched for in basins the upper levels of which have good peat beds. This precaution should be taken especially in those parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Towa, Illinois, and Indiana, where the ground water, as shown by its hardness, contains much lime and where mar! deposits are of frequent occurrence. Such deposits are often covered with peat to the depth of several feet and may also be interbedded with it. If an auger or USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 73 ordinary sounding rod is used in testing such deposits the marl may not be found because, as indicated above, the peat of the top strata may replace it in the auger and lead to the conclusion that the entire deposit is of peat and that a much larger quantity is available than really exists. Beds of soft, fine clay underlying peat in basins may be equally deceptive. APPROXIMATE DETERMINATION OF PRODUCTIVENESS. If a close approximation of the actual quantity of air-dried machine peat which a bog contains is desired, a considerable number of measured cubic yards should be dug from different parts of the deposit and from different depths and each of these macerated separately. After thorough drying by exposure to the air for some weeks the resulting blocks should be weighed; the average of the series will give the number of pounds of marketable material per cubic yard, and this multiplied into the number of cubic yards in the entire deposit and reduced to tons will give approximately the total weight of the entire available mass of peat. The more thoroughly the sample cubic yards are distributed over the entire area and depth of the bog, the more valuable the data obtained will be. In making estimates and the tests upon which they are based, the turf and the poorly decomposed top stratum of peat for a foot, more or less, below the surface is not usually included. It is perhaps worth while to point out here the urgent necessity of having all surveying and testing work done thoroughly and by com- petent men, as money expended on these determinations gives infor- mation without which it is impossible to proceed with any certainty to the making of investments; lack of knowledge or a wrong estimate may lead to overconfidence and serious financial loss, or to entire failure. CHEMICAL TESTS. The use and kinds of chemical tests have already been discussed, but for persons who may wish to know how to make preliminary exam- inations of peat for themselves the following directions are given. The recommendation is made that any preliminary tests be confirmed before the peat is utilized for commercial purposes. Analyses by a competent chemist who has the proper apparatus and laboratory equipment to do the work accurately and inexpensively are the most satisfactory. The equipment needed for such preliminary tests as need to be made are: (1) Some form of weighing apparatus that will give a reasonable degree of accuracy. If the scale is not sensitive, a large sample of peat must be tested. (2) Some form of metal or earthen vessel in which the peat can be weighed and burned. For this purpose a small 74, USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. pressed metal cup will answer. Before using, it should be thoroughly heated to burn or melt off any substances that would later be lost in this way. (3) Astove or burner in which a clear, smokeless fire can be kept up; a gas stove is ideal for the purpose. (4) Metal tongs or forceps for use in handling the cup when it is hot. The testing of peat as fuel begins with the air-dried material, although if the quantity of water the peat contains in the bog is desired, this can be ascertained by taking a sample just as it is dug and keeping it in a tightly closed glass fruit jar until the desired tests can be made. To find the percentage of water in the peat, a sample is removed from the storage jar to the clean, dry cup, which should be weighed as accurately as possible beforehand and the weight recorded. The combined weight of the sample and cup is next ascertained and the weight of the peat obtained by difference. The cup containing the sample may then be placed on a hot steam radiator or in the top of a vessel of boiling water and dried until there is no longer loss of weight after repeated weighings. The difference between the original weight and the last is the-amount of waterevaporated. By the same method, the percentage of water in an air-dried sample can be found, the drying being hastened by thoroughly pulverizing the peat before it is weighed. In drying samples in these operations care must be taken not to heat the peat much above the boiling point of water on account of the ease with which some of the volatile matter is driven off, causing too great a loss of weight. After the water is all driven off (a state indicated by no loss of weight when the sample is reheated) and after the weight of the sample is correctly noted, the residue should be set on fire and carefully burned, stirring with a clean wire being resorted to to make com- bustion complete. When the ash is nearly white, and no uncon- sumed particles can be seen, the dish should be allowed to stand till cold and the ash and dish weighed. The weight of the dish subtracted from the weight of the ash and the dish is the weight of the ash. Peat with less than 5 per cent of ash is rated as good for fuel; that with from 5 to 10 per cent, medium good; and that with more than 20 per cent is generally considered too high in ash to be of any value for commercial exploitation, except for use in a good gas pro- ducer or in some local manufacturing enterprise. If it is desired to know the quantity of coke that a given peat sample will yield, the sample should be weighed in a cup with a loosely fitting cover, and the cup and sample placed in a flame or a clear fire and heated to redness until gas ceases to come off. The gas will take fire around the cover, and as long as it burns the heating should be con- tinued. As-soon as the gas is all driven off, the cup, tightly covered, should be cooled and weighed again. The difference in weight is the USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 75 weight of the volatile matter, including the water in the peat, and the residue is the coke, which is the fixed carbon plus the ash. The density of a given peat may be determined by cutting out a block of such shape that it can be exactly measured and comparing its weight with that of the same number of cubic inches of water. Tf the block is made to contain an exact number of cubic inches, the operation will be easier. A cubic inch of water at 60° F., the ordi- nary temperature of the air at which weighings are made, weighs 252% grains. In most large cities cheap laboratory appliances can be bought, and these will serve for making the required tests. In thesame cities, too, will be found commercial testing laboratories where satisfactory fuel- testing work is done at reasonable rates. Practically all of the edu- cational institutions with courses in mechanical engineering or tech- nical chemistry also have good equipment for making fuel analyses. The essential elements to be obtained for comparison are the ash con- tent and the theoretical fuel value expressed in calories or in British thermal units (B. t. u.). MECHANICAL TESTS. According to observation and experience an examination into the mechanical structure and qualities of peat is of more value than a chemical analysis. This is especially true when the material has been selected for a single specialized use requiring a large outlay of money for a properly equipped plant. The importance of carefully investi- gating the deficiencies of peat, as well as its good qualities for the intended use, is emphasized and should not be overlooked. The defects, the cost and difficulty of handling, the large percentage of water and waste matter as compared with that of usable material, and other qualities of similar nature must be investigated. The more spe- cific the proposed use the more thorough and complete should be the preliminary investigations. As a part of such tests the selected ma- chinery should be tried under conditions as nearly as possible like those of the factory, with large samples of the chosen peat. Thesam- ples should be of not less than a ton in weight and of larger size when they can be had, and the tests should be made before any plans for installation of a permanent nature are developed. Samples used in such tests should be carefully collected, so that they include material from well-separated parts of the bog and from as deep below the surface as the peat can be reached with the usual tools for digging. The costs of these tests may seem excessive, but in the end are justified by the results obtained, whether satisfactory or not. If the peat thus tested turns out to be unsuited for the purposes for which it was chosen, the expense is especially justified. 76 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. When such tests are made it is probably more satisfactory to send the material to the factory of the makers of the machinery, where installation is complete and skilled labor is available, rather than to try to set up the machinery temporarily at the bog; by the former course more valuable results will be obtained at much less cost. The tests should be made under the inspection of some competent and dis- interested observer who is retained to guard the rights of both parties concerned. The great importance of thus trying machinery and peat together before erection of the plant has been fully demonstrated in this coun- try. In at least two instances more than $100,000 have been spent in the development of elaborate peat-fuel plants which were never successfully operated. The reason for their failure was that the ma- chinery which had been installed could not manufacture the peat available into the desired product or any other that could be sold at a profit in accessible markets. Other examples less impressive might easily be cited in which lack of success seems clearly referable to the omission of thorough preliminary testing. SOURCE AND PERCENTAGE OF ASH. Peat containing a large quantity of ash is not as good fuel as that containing a less percentage, because the former type gives less heat for a given unit of weight. The ash of peat deposits, as noted above, is derived from the mineral matter gathered by the growing plants that have built up the peat. Mineral matter may also be brought in by the water by which the plant remains have been protected and pre- served from decay, or may be blown in by the winds. The mineral matter derived from the water is carried either in solution or in sus- pension and may reach the peat continually with the water or be sup- plied intermittently by overflow from the ocean tides, lakes, streams, rain rills, or springs. When peat deposits are being tested those in which the peat is grayish or greenish, or contains whitish or red streaks and spots when dry, or shows shining specks of mica, or is gritty when ground between the teeth, may be classed as of poor quality for fuel unless their analy- ses prove otherwise. In such deposits the ash content is generally found to be high. Peat beds that lie in salt marshes, in the flood plains of brooks and rivers, in deltas of streams, or on terraces or slopes watered by springs whose waters are perceptibly mineralized, seldom pay for testing un- less in a region where all kinds of fuel are scarce. All of these types of peat beds are certain to be somewhat deteriorated by mineral mat- ter; hence the peat has its fuel value and its possible market value lowered by the presence of too much ash. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. Te In certain parts of the country peat beds in basins, even when no important streams enter them, are sometimes found to be rich in ash. This condition is caused by the presence of plants that concentrate in their cells or tissues or on their leaves and stems some of the minerals brought in by springs or other sources of water supply. The minerals are left on the bottom with other débris at the end of the cycle of growth of the plants. Calcium, magnesium, silicon, and iron com- pounds are thus segregated from lake waters and become part of the ash of peat. The effects of the action of waves and currents on sandy or muddy lake shores also must be considered as a source of mineral matter in peat beds exposed to the wash of these sediment-transporting agents. Consequently peat on the banks of lakes having wide stretches of exposed sandy and muddy shores must be tested very thoroughly before using it for commercial purposes. On the wind-swept plains of the States west of the Mississippi much fine mineral matter in the form of dust is blown into low places, where it is left and becomes a part of any peat deposit which may exist there. The supply of wind-blown dust is fairly constant from year to year, and doubtless the peat beds of Iowa, the Dakotas, and of western Minnesota will be found to have a high percentage of ash, a consid- erable part of which may be traced to dust. PREPARATION OF THE BOG FOR USE. In making the preliminary examination of a bog the quantity and kind of vegetation on the surface of the deposit should be carefully noted. If trees and shrubs are present, their kind, size, and relative abundance should be observed. The presence and frequency of roots, stumps, and buried logs should also be determined at the same time. Where trees are present and their buried remains are abundant the cost of getting the ground ready for digging the peat will be very materially greater than in a grass-covered bog. On the other hand, the wood may be sold or used for fuel at the plant, and the work of clearing may be done at times when weather or other conditions are unfavorable for production, thus keeping the force of laborers at work. It is also apparent that only a small area will be used at a time, and that the preliminary work will, therefore, be distributed over a long period, so that its cost per ton of peat produced will usually be so small as to be insignificant. When all things are taken into account, however, and a choice of bogs can be made, that which has many buried logs and stumps should be avoided. If the woody material is confined closely to the surface layers, little account should be taken of it, because it is easily removed. The deposit below such layers is often more decomposed and compact than where trees have not yet become established. 78 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. DRAINAGE OF BOG. In European countries, where peat is dug extensively by hand, the general practice is to plan and carry out an elaborate system of drain- age, so that the water content of the peat is perceptibly lowered before digging is begun. Aside from the greater convenience in digging insured by drainage, the water content is lowered to a considerable extent, although not so much nor so rapidly as would be expected, because of the water-holding powers of the peat. Drainage becomes of importance, however, whenever the greatest economy of handling the wet peat is sought, as it should always be if dug by hand. Reference to the table giving the relation of the per- centage of water in peat to its weight (p. 110) will show that, if the water content of a given weight of peat is reduced from 90 per cent to 80 per cent, its weight will be decreased 50 per cent, or one-half. Hence by lowering the water 10 per cent only one-half the weight of wet peat that would have to be dug before the reduction has to be dug out and handled for a given weight of finished product. Drainage may be unnecessary, or even undesirable, where the peat is to be dug and transported from the bog to the factory by machinery, especially if it is to be dug by dredges, loaded on scows, and towed in them across the water-filled openings already made to the factory. It would be still less desirable to drain where the peat is to be dug and moved from the bog to the factory by powerful rotary pumps, such as are employed on the ‘‘sand-sucker” dredges so often used to improve waterways and harbors in the United States. Before draining is decided upon as a policy in any given instance the possibility of draining the deposit must be determined. Although this could seemingly best be determined by taking levels, there is an important relation between the structure of the deposit and drainage possibilities which, if observed, will be of much assistance and may render surveying unnecessary. Bogs of the built-up type—that is, those which show a uniformity of structure or the presence from bot- tom to top of the remains of such plants as always grow near or slightly above the ground-water level—can be drained to the bottom or as deep as such structure is found. On the other hand, peat that fills basins formerly occupied by ponds and lakes can be drained only for a short distance below the surface, or not at all, except at great expense, as the outlet must sometimes be lowered for a long distance. An attempt to drain peat beds of this type more than a few feet by surface ditching will, therefore, be unsuccessful, and peat will generally be most easily and most cheaply worked without any attempt at draining unless diking and pumping are adopted. Deposits of this class, as they lie chiefly below the water level and can not be drained, must manifestly be worked almost entirely by machinery, unless the water is kept down by USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 79 pumping or by sinking tubular drainage wells to porous beds in the ground below the basin, as may sometimes be done. In bogs filling basins ditches should not be cut from the shoreward margin to open water in the interior of the marsh without very careful leveling across the surface, because not uncommonly the surface of the water in the pond is higher than that in the marginal area and water will flow from the pond and not into it. That utilization of peat bogs in the United States under existing economic conditions necessitates drainage remains to be proved. Where digging by hand has been tried it has been very slow and expensive and has been an important contributory cause in the final failure of the plants adopting the system. If draining is decided upon, levels must be taken carefully to determine the direction and fall of the surface, and surveys must be made of the distance to the nearest main established stream. After these data have’been col- lected draining will proceed much more cheaply and more satis- factorily if excavation is begun at the outlet end of the bog and continued as development progresses toward the higher parts. Such a course will make the system of drains as simple and short as possible and will reduce thereby the cost of the work, and by keeping them wet will also protect the undeveloped parts of the bog from loss by fire and injury from freezing. Where machine peat is to be made from a drained bog the ditches must be provided with dams to hold the water in them during the winter, as freezing injures the cohesive- ness of the drier parts of peat beds more than it does those that are kept very wet. CHOICE OF SITE FOR THE PLANT. The choice of a site for the plant would seem to be a simple matter and not of sufficient importance to merit much discussion, but when it is remembered that from 80 to 90 per cent of the material brought to the plant is water (and therefore waste) it becomes evident that by reducing the distance of the average haul of the wet peat a material saving in the cost of this transportation and production will be made. The permanent buildings of the plant, therefore, should be so placed in relation to the bog to be worked that the raw wet peat will reach the grinding machinery by the shortest and most direct route; from the grinding machinery it should be taken as directly to the drying grounds or sheds. An ideal arrangement, especially in the manufacture of machine peat, is to have no fixed buildings, but to have the movable machinery always at the side of the openings from which the peat is taken, and . to pass the peat directly from the mechanical excavator to the pulping machinery and thence to a part of the bog near by that is laid out as drying ground. To insure such mobility of plant, the machinery 661°—Bull. 16—11——6 80 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. may be mounted on a strong car and moved on iron rails or upon rollers or broad-wheeled trucks; the engine is used to run the plant and as a locomotive. This is the common practice in many parts of Europe. The plant is much the same temporary sort of an arrange- ment as a portable sawmill or thrashing outfit. The most recent practice in Germany, Canada, and the United States is to combine digging, macerating, and spreading machinery into a single self- propelling plant which is supported on a single platform with or without rails. However, in some cases it will be desirable to place the machinery on solid ground, because there are difficulties in moving peat machin- ery of large capacity from place to place on the soft and unstable surface of the wet peat. If the moving of the wet peat is the ruling consideration, the plant ought to be placed as near as possible to the bog, the necessity of a firm foundation and convenient approaches and drying ground being also observed; the hauls necessary to get the freshly dug peat to the buildings should average as short as possible during the life of the plant. The best location would ordinarily be about midway of one of the long sides of the deposit. If, however, more satisfactory transportation arrangements can be made, a more stable supply of labor assured, or better drying ground obtained at some point other than the one indicated, these practical matters should determine the selection of the site. LAYING OUT THE PLANT. Several factories in the United States have been built for making peat fuel in which, seemingly, no thought or care has been given to laying out the plant so as to secure the greatest efficiency from the machinery and economy in the details of production. This is evidently a radical defect in such plants, if the highest financial returns are sought, as these are dependent upon successfully solving the following problem, stated in terms of the unit of production. The problem in peat-fuel manufacture is so to handle a ton of wet peat (containing 90 per cent of water, nearly all of which is useless) as it is dug from the undrained bog that the approximately 225 to 250 pounds of salable materials (containing 12 to 20 percent of water) which will be obtained from it can be sold in the open market at a price that will pay for the digging, preparation for sale, and cost of selling, and, in addition, maintain the plant and equipment and return a profit on the investment. The handling of many tons of this wet raw material and the production of a large amount of marketable fuel only complicates matters if the unit of quantity is made at a loss, and manifestly any saving in the course of proper preparation will help to give a favorable solution of the problem. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 81 The machinery should be so arranged in the building that its best operation requires the least possible labor and supervision and that the various processes through which the peat must be put will become automatic or go on with the minimum amount of human labor and attention. Careful study should be given to the entire course of production and whenever simple and efficient machinery can be substituted for manual labor, it should be introduced, if possible. The fact must not be lost sight of, however, that a product of such low selling price as peat is much more likely to be manufactured profitably if the machinery used is simple and the processes through which it is made ready for sale are few and direct than if complicated and high-priced machines and numerous operations are required. SELECTION OF PROCESSES AND MACHINERY. The process by which a given peat bed can be utilized to the best advantage and with the greatest profit depends, among other factors, upon the quality of peat, the kind of market which can be reached, and the amount of capital which is available for the purpose. Not all kinds of peat will make good briquets, even with the best machinery, and it would be a needless expense to erect a large and expensive plant in a region of limited population, or where coal or other fuels are very cheap. It would obviously also be a poor policy to choose a process which would need a large investment of capital when an equally salable type of fuel, whether actually as good or not, could be made with a much smaller investment. It should be remembered that there is no such thing as a really secret process for making peat fuel, that when the time comes for selection the number of available processes is not large, and that all such processes have often been described by European authors or by others discussmg the use of peat in Europe. It should be the chief concern of the purchasing agent before any decision is reached to learn everything possible about the progress of peat-fuel production in Europe, and especially in Germany and Sweden, where, for more than a century, experienced men with keen, well-trained minds and ample facilities have been studying the possibilities of the substance and have been testing ways in which they have thought it could be most cheaply and readily made into an efficient and salable product. After obtaining this information a careful examination should be made of the kinds of machinery now on the market as the practical result of the world’s experience. That type should be chosen which has proven most efficient and successful in actual operation under con- 82 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. ditions similar to those under which the proposed plant is to operate. With so many available types that have been thoroughly tested by commercial use it is not advisable to adopt new and untried processes and machinery for a plant that must be made financially successful from the start. However, after machinery embodying the latest European knowl- edge has been tried, modification and adaptation to the conditions of production which experience has brought to light may seem advisable, Such work can be done much more satisfactorily after a preliminary test than at an earlier time before any practical knowledge had been gained. Indeed, it seems that much more real progress would be made by American inventors in developing machinery for manu- facturing peat fuel if they started with the best European types as the basis of their plans rather than with an attempt to start from the beginning. CHARACTER OF THE PLANT. The size of the prospective operations, the process of manufacture chosen, and the amount of capital to be spent will govern to some extent the necessary expenditures for buildings and machinery. Aside from these factors, however, expediency and the actual needs of the business should govern the character of the buildings. The permanent buildings needed for a factory making machine peat are few and can be of the simplest and cheapest construction consistent with durability for the expected life of the plant. Al that is actually required is sheds for the protection of the boiler, engine, and grinding machinery and for drying and storing the peat. As production is limited to the warm months, heating and lighting in the winter do not have to be considered. This fact may also be taken into account in the construction. In Europe many establishments making peat fuel have no per- manent buildings, except for storage, as the machinery is all movable and is given temporary housing at the places on the bog where it is in use. Each peat machine makes a certain number of tons per day and the plant is added to by the purchase of new units as the need for increased output arises. The same would be true if self-propelling automatic machines were used instead of the standard older types. If peat briquets are to be made, somewhat larger and more sub- stantial buildings must be erected, because more machinery of heavier construction must be housed; yet even for the briquet plant the buildings may be built as cheaply and roughly as sawmills. The chief requirements are that the roofs keep out the rain and that the foundations for the presses, boilers, drivers, and engines be of suffi- cient strength. A simple, inexpensive, compact, and well-arranged USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 83 plant of moderate capacity, increased unit by unit, is much more advisable than large and costly buildings containing small equipment. Peat-coke, or charcoal manufacture combined with the recovery of by-products, requires a heavier investment for buildings to house the much greater quantity of apparatus necessary, and these must be of good construction, because the plant will be operated the entire year. Practically the same statement applies to the buildings that would be needed for utilizing peat for gas production. Even for for such uses, however, care may be exercised to keep down the outlay of construction by making the necessary buildings simple and inexpensive. Some of the buildings which have been erected for peat-fuel factories are monuments to the dreams of their builders. WORKING CAPITAL. The preceding sections show that a considerable number of factors must be taken into account preliminary to operating a peat-fuel manufactory. One of the most important is a definite and full pro- vision for working capital for the maintenance and running expenses of the plant for the time that will surely be needed to develop it to a state of efficient production and to build up and establish a market for its output. An examination of the history of the attempts to start peat-fuel operations in this country seems plainly to show that many of them have failed because of insufficient working capital. Money enough generally has been provided for actual building and partial or com- plete equipment of factories, but the projectors apparently have been so certain of success that they have deemed it sufficient to plan to produce peat fuel, and to build and more or less fully equip their plant therefor. Beyond this, they have often seemed to expect that the anticipated product would make and market itself with so much profit that necessary additional equipment could be had, dividends on the original investment paid, and the production continued indefinitely with increasing impetus. This is not the usual result of an attempt to introduce a new and practically untried and unknown article that competes with one that has been long in use and that is acknowledged to be superior in some respects. In the cases under consideration, when the investors did not immediately realize their anticipated profits, they lost faith and refused to furnish additional money, often before their plants had advanced to a stage where commercial manufacture was possible. Such a result might have been foreseen in some cases and should have been provided for in all, as frequently is done in other kinds of business, by reserving a certain part of the funds at hand for carrying on the business through its period of experimental production. If 84 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. such action had been taken, and later the necessity had arisen for increased facilities for production, the money for them would have been available. To make no provision for working capital must be looked upon as a most serious error in business policy, and the conclusion seems warranted that those who start and promote enterprises for peat utilization in the United States at present without such provision are inviting the same troubles that have beset their predecessors, and can expect no greater success. CAPITALIZATION. The capitalization of peat enterprises, as stated in the preliminary literature issued by their promoters, has varied greatly. At least one reported an authorized capital of $20,000,000. Obviously, however, certain definite matters control the sums of money which must be provided to establish a plant for using peat and to bring it to a suc- cessful stage of production, and these are here considered. In general, it may be said that large capitalization is neither needed nor desirable for most forms of peat utilization, but it is important, as has been noted above, to have reserve capital for use during the critical periods of the proposed factory. The amount of capital actually needed will differ for different products and for different ways of making the same products; it will be governed also by the proposed quantity of output, the size and kind of buildings to be erected, and other factors which do not need to be taken up here. The simpler processes of peat-fuel making on a moderate scale can be undertaken and carried on with success on a small capital. Some of the more complicated operations, such as making peat coke and by-products, or those peat products requiring heavier machines, more manipulation and labor, and stronger and more expensive buildings, must be liberally supported with money or credit if any returns are to be derived from them. A much greater amount of capital must be assured and actually paid in, as required, to bring to a commercially productive and inde- pendent stage a plant that is equipped with machinery invented to exploit some new way of treating peat than would be needed to do an equivalent amount of development with machinery that is already on the market and has proved satisfactory in actual manufacture of the product which it was designed to make. This statement is war- ranted by the experience of many of the more aggressively advertised experiments in peat development which have been made in America and Europe. These experiments have invariably taken much more money and time to bring to a state of completion than their inven- tors anticipated; and some, after all, have failed. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 85 EXPERIMENTAL WORK IN NEW PLANTS. The past uncounted waste of time and money in this country in what is called experimentation demands a brief notice. Experimentation has generally signified the random use of the whole or a part of a plant and its force of laborers for the purpose of testing some of the ideas of the man in charge or of some of his associates, in the hope that the process or machinery in use may be advantageously supplanted. The futility and waste lie more in the way in which the work is generally carried out than in the ideas themselves. Usually experi- mentation of this sort is attempted without the appliances for exact methods and without the originator having any clearly developed plans as to what is needed or how the work is to be conducted; yet it calls for much energy and money, and in the end counts for nothing. If the same amount of work and funds were used to raise the effi- ciency of the working force and of the machinery already in use, much of the experimenting would be entirely unnecessary. Some- times the men who propose the changes are entirely without experi- ence and training, or have only elementary knowledge, and the work which they do is nearly alllost. It appears certain that the men who have come nearest to success or have had the greatest success in making peat fuel have done so by avoiding as much as possible the expense of the sort of experiments described. They have developed their plants to profitable production by learning in practice from day to day the peculiarities of the substance with which they worked and the conditions required for making the best product possible with the machinery and process which they had chosen. It must not be understood that properly controlled and carefully planned experiments may not lead to valuable results in the making of products from peat, but in so far as this work is done by inexpe- rienced and untrained men, and diverts time, money, energy, and work needed to improve the commercial operation of the plant, it is a source of injury and positive loss, and may destroy what would other- wise be a profitable business. It may be said in closing this discussion that in the writer’s judg- ment the adoption of untried machinery for peat manufacture should always be considered as a purely experimental or speculative investment, especially if only working plans and calculations are submitted as the basis of the proposed plant. Only that machinery which has been actually used and has shown what it will do under approximately commercial conditions should be the basis of a factory from which it is necessary to get quick financial returns. It has been the history of the development of all mechanical and chemical processes that they have developed slowly and by repeated and often costly failures. The more thoroughly and completely 86 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. the processes are dependent for success upon the proper operation of a number of machines working in harmony for long periods of time the longer the period of development must be. In the history of peat-fuel enterprises in Europe this fact is emphasized again and again. At the present writing announcements are made of the reduction to a commercially possible stage of two important nearly continuous processes for utilizing peat. These processes have been before the public for a number of years as theoretically valuable, as demonstrated by laboratory experiments, but only now have they been sufficiently worked out in the details of the machinery needed for turning out the finished product on a scale and at a price that warrants the erection of the large plants required; the latest authentic information indicates that these have yet to be built. CUT PEAT. In Ireland, England, Denmark, Germany, and the other countries of Europe where peat is a common domestic fuel the simplest and most ancient method of preparation is still most commonly used. In Ireland, where nearly all of the fuel consumed by the country people is peat, no other process of preparing it has ever been used to any appreciable extent. Within a few years, however, the Depart- ment of Agriculture and Technical Education has established several temporary experiment stations for the purpose of introducing to the people the treatment of peat and its manufacture into fuel by simple machinery, most of which is of German origin. The preparation of cut peat and the equipment for making it are so simple that the owners of small peat deposits can easily make fuel for home consumption. On this account a somewhat detailed description of the methods of procedure is given here, although the product is such that probably it can have only a very limited use in the United States. After the surface of the part of the bog that is to be used is cleared, it is drained to the nearest watercourse by a ditch of good size. Into this main ditch are led a number of smaller ditches of sufficient capacity to lower the general water level in the peat at least 2 or 3 feet. The part of the field to be worked is then chosen and more care- fully cleared and leveled, so that its surface may be used as a drying ground. If this area is selected near the margin of the main ditch, it will be more easily and cheaply drained than if it is at a greater distance, because the water will already be lowered there, and the transverse ditches when dug will be as short as possible. Such small transverse ditches on the drying ground are made about a foot wide and with enough slope to the bottom to carry off the water that collects in them; they are generally placed from 30 to 60 feet apart. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 87 If the bog can not be drained cheaply by ditching, an opening may be made near the place selected for beginning work. The water can be pumped from this opening from time to time as it accumulates and can be conducted away from the immediate vicinity of the hole and the drying grounds. Care should be taken not to let water into such a hole by digging into the sands below the peat. The tools used for making cut peat in different European countries are somewhat different in size and shape, but they are always of the simplest form and construction and differ only slightly from those used in ordinary ditching and digging. In Ireland, the most important special tool is the slane, a stout narrow spade having the length and width of the bricks to be cut. It has a narrow sharp steel lug welded on one side of the point of the blade and at right angles thereto. Some types of spades used for peat cutting in Germany have two of these lugs, one in the middle of the blade and the other at one side, so that two bricks can be cut at once. The size of the bricks varies in different countries according to the purposes for which they are to be used, the moisture conditions under which they must be dried, and the density and structure of the peat. The usual range is from 8 or 10 to 18 inches in length, and from 4 to 7 inches in width by 3 to 6 inches in thickness, when the bricks are freshly cut and wet. The men generally work in pairs, a digger and a tender. The turf is first removed from a strip at the end of the ground prepared for digging and the peat below dug out in the form of bricks of as nearly uniform size as possible, and placed to one side. The tender picks them up, loads them on a car or wheelbarrow, wheels them to the drying ground, and lays them out for drying. As soon as the peat has been removed from a depth twice the length of the spade, or, more often, to the depth of the ditch bottoms, a new cut is started, the digger working in the trench to make the horizontal cuts, which are the last ones to be made. The vertical cuts are made with a straight spade or spadelike knife, the operator first making the wall cut at the length of the block from the last cut. The cuts forming the sides of the blocks are then made the width of the block apart; the horizontal cuts are made from the trench, and determine the thickness of the block. If the peat is very thoroughly decomposed and structureless, the blocks may possibly be cut with the long axes vertical, using the slane, but where stratification is well marked or the peat fibrous this way of cutting causes the blocks to be easily broken along the lines of bedding; hence in most cases the length of the block is cut parallel to the planes of bedding. The slane may be used to cut the bricks out after the first vertical cut is made along the wall, especially where the peat is dense enough to be cut easily. 88 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. After the blocks are taken to the drying ground they are stood on edge, with narrow spaces between them, and allowed to dry and drain for some days; in some countries they are turned during this time. In Ireland, as soon as they are firm enough to be handled they are ‘‘footed,” or stood on end, generally seven in a small circle and two others crossed on top of the group. After a week or two, in good drying weather (or longer in bad weather), the blocks are “‘refooted”” by turning them and combining two piles into one. In about four weeks they are ready to be removed and stacked. The bricks are piled in an open manner so that the air can circulate freely through the piles, and the peat is often left in these stacks until needed for use, the top being protected by a thatch or by a shed roof. If dried too rapidly, the product cracks and is brittle, and in this country stacking to check the drying may have to be resorted ‘to in less than four weeks. In different countries the methods of piling the still moist peat blocks vary somewhat, but any open form that gives free access of the air to as much of the block as possible will serve. Where lumber is cheap, racks similar to those used in brickyards may be used to advantage for the preliminary drying and will hasten it by some weeks. Peat blocks of the sizes given weigh from about half a pound to a pound and a half when they are air dry or contain from 15 to 30 per cent of moisture. The cost of producing peat in this form varies with the cost of labor and the skill of the laborers who do the work. In Continental Europe, where this sort of work is usually paid for by the piece, the men getting a fixed price per thousand bricks in each of the processes of digging, spreading, etc., the fuel is made at from 50 cents to about $1.75 per ton of air-dry peat bricks. The efficiency and price of labor and the different ways of handling the product are the only apparent reasons why the price should greatly vary. Cutting and drying peat for fuel should be done as early in the season as possible, because the product dries much more quickly in spring and early summer than later, and when the gathering is put off till August the peat may not get thoroughly dry before winter. Cut peat is the poorest form of peat fuel, as it is bulky, friable, and burns up rapidly with considerable waste when thoroughly dry. In general, this kind of fuel may be considered as unfitted for Ameri- can fuel markets; its chief use, if any, will be in the homes of its producers. The dark-colored, thoroughly disintegrated peats make the best cut bricks, and the light-brown, fibrous kinds the poorest, except for kindling. In some parts of Europe, however, cut peat is still used to a considerable extent, even in the towns. Where it is made on a large scale machines are used to dig the peat, as these give the advantage USES OF PEAT, FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 89 of producing large blocks quickly, even from undrained and undrain- able bogs which could hardly be worked by hand. The essential part of such machines, which differ mainly in the details of construction and not in principle, is a series of three vertical iron or steel plates edged with steel knives. These plates are arranged in the form of a bottomless box from which one side has been removed and are supported and moved by simple machinery. The knives are forced into the peat to the desired depth by a strong rack and pinion operated by a crank turned by hand. The column of peat thus formed is cut off and supported at the bottom by a horizontal knife that is forced across the bottom of the box formed by the three vertical knife-edged plates. The horizontal knife is operated by a powerful lever worked from the surface. The column of peat, held up by the horizontal knife, is then raised by reversing the motion of the crank, and as it is brought above the surface it is cut into bricks with a spade, just as when cut by hand. Some machines of this type will cut peat to a depth of more than 20 feet. They usually can be operated by two men; one raises and lowers the cutting apparatus and the other cuts up and loads the peat on barrows or cars, in which it is wheeled to the drying grounds. Where the peat is cut from considerable depths by large and heavy machines, three or four men may be needed to each machine. Peat- cutting machines of this sort are strongly built, but may be moved from point to point on the surface of the bog as digging progresses. The guide for the knife can be moved so that a trench several feet wide can be cut without changing the position of the whole machine. MACHINE PEAT. GENERAL STATEMENT. The term ‘‘machine peat” following German practice, has so gen- erally come into use to designate peat that after being dug has been treated to a process of grinding or macerating and pressing before forming it into bricks that it is used here. Terms which are nearly or quite equivalent are press peat, pressed peat, condensed peat, machine-formed peat, and wet-process peat, so called in the United States to distinguish it from briquetted peat, which is thoroughly dried before being formed into blocks by great pressure in a bri- quetting press. Cut peat as a fuel that is to be used, or even produced, on any con- siderable scale has well-marked defects, such as lack of uniformity, firmness, and density, small fuel value per unit of volume, and a high percentage of water frequently found in it even after prolonged drying. These defects led to early efforts to work the raw material into a more compact and durable form which would dry more thor- 90 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. oughly and quickly and would be more dense and therefore easier to to transport. In general the earliest experiments in this direction were made to improve the quality of the very fibrous kinds of peat. So much was gained by even the crudest treatment that gradually in the more progressive peat regions all types of peat were treated in this way, and cut peat was only sparingly made by the larger enter- prises. By the effects of the mechanical treatment mentioned above, the plant remains in the peat are reduced to a fine pulp, and their water-retaining capacity is lowered considerably; hence peat that has been thoroughly ground and mixed dries more quickly and forms denser fuel than that untreated. Within limits the more thorough the grinding and pulping and the more quickly the drying takes place, the more compact is the resulting fuel and the better its quality. In theory, at least, when peat has been thoroughly macerated, a block of it is soon covered by a thin coating of a colloidal or glue- like material, which becomes nearly waterproof on drying, but which is sufficiently porous to allow moisture to pass through it from the inside of the brick. Possibly also this coating, when wet by rain, absorbs enough water to close up the minute openings which exist in the surface when it is dry, and thus prevent further absorption. Hence after a heavy rain properly ground machine peat is nearly as dry as it was before, whereas cut peat takes in a large amount of water and if the rain is prolonged may be much disintegrated. At the same time the contraction of the outer layers of the brick as they dry out exerts a certain pressure on the water contained in the interior, and thus probably forces it out toward the moister side, which in this case is always the one lying on the ground or on which the brick is supported. METHODS IN USE FOR MACERATING PEAT WITHOUT SPECIAL MACHINERY. There are two quite distinct processes used for macerating peat with- out special machinery: First, that in which enough water is added to the peat before it is macerated to make it into a soft paste, which, after treatment, is often decidedly liquid. This pulp is usually formed into bricks after it is spread on the drying ground. The forming is done either by hand, whence the name hand turf sometimes given the product, or by turning the pulpinto molds. Less often the macer- ated peat is spread in a layer on the drying ground and cut into the required shape with special tools, the bricks thus formed separating through contraction as they dry. By the second method the peat is ground with practically the same amount of water that it contained when dug and is forced from the orifice of the grinding machine in one or more continuous prismatic or cylindrical strands, which are cut into bricks as they emerge from the machine; some types of machines form the peat pulp into balls; USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 91 others perforate the bricks to facilitate drying. The product is machine peat in the usually accepted sense of the term, and the prin- cipal variations in its manufacture are allfoundin the details of con- struction of macerating machines and in drying the peat. The simplest and most primitive modification of the first process, as used in Ireland and in other-parts of Europe where no capital is avail- able, is the following: The coarse, fibrous top layers of the peat are thrown into the hole made by the previous season’s work. If sufficient water is already in the hole, the coarse peat is thoroughly mixed by trampling with that of finer texture in the hole, until the mass is of uniformly fine grained and pasty consistency. After this mixing is completed the ground peat is taken to the drying ground and spread in a layer from 8 to 12 inches thick, and the bricks are marked off by hand as the spreading proceeds. Only slightly more complicated than this simple process, is the use of wooden troughs for holding the peat and water while the maceration is going on, or the substitution of the feet of horses for those of men for mixing the peat and water. In larger enterprises with some capital the peat is ground and mixed with water by machinery, a simple form of which is made by placing in the trough a rotating axis, to which are attached spirally-arranged knives and which is turned by horse or steam power. The peat and water are thrown into the upper end of the trough and mixed and reduced to a slurry while being moved forward by the revolution of the knives. At the outlet end the slurry is removed in cars or bar- rows to the drying field and is sometimes turned into sets of wooden or metal molds, in which the sections have the dimensions of the bricks to be made. The mass of peat is tamped into the molds and smoothed off, and after a short time, the surplus water having drained away, the bricks are easily removed and are then laid out on the drying ground to drain and dry, after which the procedure is the same as in drying cut eat. F In Denmark and Sweden, where women and children are hired to do the work of turning and piling on the bricks on the drying ground, the cost of producing this type of peat on a large scale varies from $1.25 to more than $1.50 per ton. The manufacture of peat fuel by any of the various modifications of the above-mentioned processes does not seem feasible in the United States except on a small scale, since the hand labor required is con- siderable, and the product is no better and quite as expensive to make as the better-known machine-formed peat, which is taking its place abroad. Machine peat, as the name is commonly understood, is made by grinding the peat with about the same amount of moisture that it contains in the bog and cutting it into bricks as it issues from the 92 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. outlet of the grinding machine in a thoroughly macerated condition, but sufficiently stiff to retain its form. REASONS FOR EXTENDED DISCUSSION OF METHOD OF MANUFACTURE. This method of manufacturing peat into fuel by machinery is some- what thoroughly discussed here because it is so widely applicable to all kinds of peat, whether well or poorly decomposed, fibrous or com- pact, light-colored or dark. The equipment needed for successfully carrying on the process is modest, and the investment of capital small compared with that required for the more elaborate coking and briquetting processes. The experience needed for using the method is also much less than with either of the others. The discussion seems to be warranted also by the fact that many trustworthy observers report that it is the only way yet found in Europe for mak- ing peat fuel for general purposes and in quantities at a profit, except at afew plants referred to under briquetting and coking (pp. 120-139). The opponents of this method of making peat into salable fuel say that it leaves much to be desired, not only mechanically but in the quality of the product, which for some purposes is not an ideal fuel. The product is, however, solid, tough, and of rather high specific weight. Where it has failed to give satisfaction under boilers in the United States the cause has been faulty construction of the fire boxes. In Amsterdam, Holland, machine peat sells at a retail price equivalent to $5.80 for the lighter grades and $6.30 for heavier grades, when coal may be bought at about $4 per ton. Evidently, when people are accustomed to it and know how to get the best results from its use, machine peat has decided advantages for domestic use. EARLY PEAT PRESSES. The manufacture of machine peat began in Europe at least as early as 1820, when crude wooden machines were in use in Saxony. The use of similar machines was reported shortly afterwards in England and Ireland. These early machines really attempted to form the peat into blocks and to squeeze the water from it at the same time by powerful screw presses. These failed to give very satisfactory results, however, and hydraulic presses were afterwards tested, both alone and in combi- nation with macerating apparatus. The machinery was slow in action, expensive to run and maintain, and the results, after repeated trials with many types of presses, so uniformly unsuccessful finan- cially that the idea of pressing the water from the peat was reluc- tantly abandoned. The reports on these machines show that the best and most powerful presses rarely reduced the moisture content below 65 to 75 per cent and gave a very small daily output. Besides these difficulties, the drying of peat by pressure resulted in forcing the finer USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 93 and more completely disintegrated parts of the peat with the water into and through the cloth used to retain the peat in the press. The pores of the cloth were thus stopped so completely after a short time that water could be forced through it with difficulty or not at all; sometimes, also, the peat would expand again after the pressure was taken off. At the present time there is a revival of interest in this country in the possibilities of using great pressure, vacuum pumps, sieves, and similar devices for drying wet peat. Those inventors who are attempting to develop processes depending on these and like princi- ples will learn what to avoid by a careful study of the types of peat presses developed by German experimenters and abandoned in the middle of the last century, as described in the older standard Euro- pean peat manuals. ESSENTIAL PROCESSES. In considering the development and construction of a factory for making machine peat, the following processes must be provided for: Digging the peat, transportation to the machine, grinding, removal to the drying grounds or sheds, care during drying, and, usually, subsequent stacking and storage. If, as is often the case in Europe, the peat machine is placed on the bog at or near the opening from which the peat is dug, the second process is eliminated, as the material may be dug and placed in the machine by one operation, either by hand, by a dredge bucket, or by a mechanical digger and elevator. Dees. macerating, and spreading form a continuous, automatic operation in the latest types of self-propelling, portable plants now being tested in America and Europe. DESCRIPTION OF PEAT MACHINE, The peat machine, or mill, is the important part of the plant, and should be the focus of all the other parts. Especial attention should be given to the importance of having each stage of the manufacture as nearly continuous with the one before it as possible. The peat machine has been developed rather slowly and the best models are of strong and simple construction. In principle and form the latest types are much like the pug mill or grinding machine for plastic clay. Some of the experimental plants in the United States have used ordinary brick or tile makers’ pug mills, with very slight changes, to grind peat, especially that with little fibrous matter, and have found them well suited for the purpose. The earliest German peat machines of this type of construction appeared about 1860 and were vertical iron cylinders, in the upper part of which knives, fastened to a slowly revolving axis, cut and ground the peat. It was then subjected to pressure by a revolving 94 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. screw at the lower part of the cylinder and forced through a rectan- gular tube, opening at the side of the machine. This shaped the mass, which as it issued from the opening was received on movable boards and cut into bricks by hand. This type of machine worked well with structureless peat, but its operation was slow and the knives soon became clogged when fibrous peat was introduced into the cylinder. The type has gradually given place to one having a hori- zontal iron cylinder and a swiftly rotating axis armed with spirally arranged knives and flanges. These act as screws to press the peat forward to the constricted outlet end of the cylinder, while they are mixing and macerating it, and in passing through them the peat is reduced to a fine-grained or structureless, homogeneous pulp. TYPES OF MACHINES, The most recently devised and efficient form of this class of machines has a hopper for receiving the peat at the inlet end, doors in the outer casing, by which all working parts can be easily reached, and a device for cutting the strand of peat pulp into bricks of uniform length as it issues from the orifice. In some models the vertical body is still retained, in others there is a combination of vertical and horizontal cylinders. In some machines the knives are separate from the screw flanges, but mounted on the same shaft with them; in others the flanges of the screw are sharpened and work against stationary knives set fast in the cast-iron walls of the cylinder; still others have both fixed and movable knives, the cutting edges of which work together like the blades of a scissors; a few models have been built and placed on the market, with two knife-armed shafts revolving in opposite directions. Many types of peat machines have been patented in the United States, but few of them have ever been really used, and most of them follow European models. European manufacturers make peat machines in all sizes. The smallest are run by the power furnished by a single horse, and with the help of a few men turn out 3 or more tons (air-dry weight) of peat bricks per day. The largest must be equipped with powerful engines and accessories and require the services of from 15 to 25 men and boys to dig the peat and handle the 60,000 to 80,000 peat bricks, amounting when dry to 50 or more tons of fuel, made in a successful day’s run. DESIRABLE QUALITIES OF MACHINES, In all of these variations in the form of peat machines, the purpose is to reduce quickly and effectively to a fine pulp all of the coarse matter found in the peat. This also must be done with the fewest possible delays from breakage of parts of the machine or from clog- ging caused by the fibers of the peat winding around the shaft or the USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 95 knives, or from pieces of wood or even of stone becoming fast in their passage through the machine. The possibilities of such obstructions require strong and heavy construction and easy accessibility of all working parts so that they can be quickly cleaned when clogged, and replaced when broken. The best peat machine to purchase is the one which will most rapidly and completely grind the greatest quantity of peat in a given time with the least power and attention and will produce a uniformly well- macerated pulp from all types of peat that are suitable for fuel. Such a machine should be strong and simple, and its parts should be capable of being quickly and easily reached and adjusted when nec- essary. In most of the peat machines now in use the grinding parts are made so that their angle of setting can be changed according to the kind of peat that is to be manufactured—a most necessary improve- ment where peat is as variable in structure as it is in the United States. Many models of peat machines of the type just described are manufactured in various European countries, and a few excellent ones are advertised as manufactured in the United States; from among them all a form to meet almost every need can be found. The principal types of European peat machines of modern construc- tion are fully described and illustrated in a recent publication of the Canada Department of Mines¢ to which the reader is referred for further details. Reference to the catalogues of the manufacturers in this country and Europe is also suggested. The most efficient of the machines now in use, under favorable con- ditions of operation, reduce by about one-third the bulk of a mass of wet peat as it passes through them. This is done partly by squeezing out a portion of the water, but more of the condensation is caused by crushing the fibrous and woody structures, and by releasing included gases during the maceration and kneading that the peat receives while in the machines. There is little true compression, as the pressure exerted on the peat is not sufficient to remove much of the water from it, and because the peat is not confined, such pressure as is brought to bear upon it only causes it to move forward in the cylinder and flow freely from the outlet. METHODS OF MOUNTING MACHINES. Peat machines are mounted in several different ways. Some designed to be used on the bog are placed on timber platforms, either on rollers or trucks; others are mounted on cars, together with the boilers and engines used for running them, and the whole plant takes up little space and is very portable, so that it can be moved aNystrom, E., Peat and lignite; their manufacture and uses in Europe; Canada Department of Mines, Mines Branch, 1908. 661°—Bull. 16—11——7 96 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. about wherever rails can be laid. This kind of mounting has been extended by the use of broad-tired iron or wooden wheels, or moy- able roller platforms such as are common on agricultural machinery in the United States; thus the entire plant becomes as mobile as a thrashing machine, the main factor being the weight of the larger sizes of peat machines. This weight, if properly distributed, is no insuperable matter, and in Canada in 1911 the largest size of peat machine is reported as successfully tried on a trackless self-moving portable plant. The practice of using movable rails, however, is sat- isfactory in most places, and as rails are used constantly for trans- porting the macerated peat or the finished peat bricks from machine to drying grounds and thence to storage or shipping point, they are always available. DIGGING MACHINERY. Until recently but little machinery has been used for digging the peat, which is the initial task of actual peat fuel production. By far the larger percentage of peat made into fuel in European countries is still dug by hand labor. Within the past few years, however, as larger machines and plants have been built, prominent makers of peat machinery have been constructing mechanical diggers operated by steam or electric power. Power digging machines, so far as descriptions have been received, are either of the form of the hand-power machines already described (pp. 88-89) but of larger size, or of the chain-and-bucket type. The latter, although effective in peat of the more completely decomposed kinds, can not be satisfactorily used where stumps and other poorly decomposed tree remains are abundant, as they sometimes are, unless the machines are of very strong construction. The most recent models of this type of digging machinery developed in Europe are reported to be satisfactory. They have the advantage over other forms of diggers of mixing the peat from different beds, thus securing a homogeneous product. DIPPER DREDGES. In general, the dipper dredge, or its land equivalent, the steam shovel, would seemingly be more satisfactory and give better and more continuous service than the chain-and-bucket digger. Both have already been tried successfully in the United States in peat operations and are still in use at several plants where peat is produced. The statement has been made that the dipper dredge can not be used because of the danger of including material from below the peat, but this, of course, is merely an operating detail, which can readily be provided for. This form of machinery will probably be much more freely used in this country as a peat industry develops than it has USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 97 been in Europe, as digging machines of some kind will be a practical necessity in the United States, whatever the type of material pro- duced. It will always be necessary to dig a much larger weight of peat than will be sold. Thus a machine that can produce 50 tons of salable fuel in a day’s run, if it is to be kept up to its capacity, must be pro- vided with approximately 10 times as much raw material because the latter is about 90 per cent water and other waste. If the macer- ating machine is not kept busy, the productive part of the plant will be idle some of the time. To dig and move the required amount of wet peat by hand labor would mean a high labor cost, which could hardly be tolerated under existing economic conditions. Even in small plants where the excavating machinery would be idle part of the time its use will probably be found more economical and satis- factory than dependence on hand digging. AUGER DIGGING MACHINES. Many years ago in Canada a scow was equipped with very large augers, which, on being driven into the peat, dug it out of the bog and elevated it, making a canal as the digging progressed. Recently, in one of the experimental portable plants devised in the United States, augers of much smaller size and of different form have been used to excavate and macerate peat. Their use is reported to be satisfactory. MECHANICAL CONVEYERS AND ELEVATORS. All of the large peat machines manufactured in Europe are pro- vided with mechanical conveyers and elevators, generally of the belt or chain-and-bucket type, and sufficiently long to reach from the bottom of the excavation to the hopper of the machine when the latter is placed near the opening in the bog. The peat as it is dug is thrown on the elevator, conveyed to the machine, and dropped into the hopper; thus time and labor are saved. The conveyers are usually operated and adjusted as a part of the peat machine, being placed either at one end or at one of the sides, and the same engine runs both. If the peat machine is permanently placed in a building, the ele- vator may still be used, or it may be discarded, as the cars loaded with peat can be drawn up an inclined plane to a bin placed in a loft (above the machine, and the wet peat can be fed from the bin by a gravity chute. TRANSPORTATION OF WET PEAT. TRAMCARS. Machinery for transporting to the drying grounds the peat bricks, after the peat has been ground and formed in the mill, has been more thoroughly developed than that for digging, and several types have been more or less fully worked out by different makers. 98 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. These are, first, tramcars running on tracks temporarily laid on the surface of the bog, and pushed by men or drawn back and forth by horses or cables, or, in the United States, by electric or gasoline locomotives. Generally the cars used for this purpose have some form of open wooden or iron rack so that a number of tiers of wooden pallets full of the wet bricks can be loaded onto them, but where the peat is spread on the ground, wooden or iron dump cars are used. The tracks are usually laid out in such a way that the loaded cars go out to the drying grounds one way and return another, and that part of the grounds farthest from the machine is first covered. By sys- tematic and careful planning, the tracks can be so laid that the num- ber of men employed and the number of cars used for moving the wet peat bricks to the drying ground will be reduced to a minimum. CABLE AND CARS. In Sweden a system of cable transportation has been successfully developed by which the cars are drawn out and back by moving cables kept in motion by the engine running the peat machine. The track is movable and is laid out in the form of a rectangle with round corners. This arrangement reduces the number of men employed by as many as are elsewhere required to move the cars, one only being needed at the machine to fasten the clutch of the outgoing cars to the cable and to release those returning empty. The men who do the unloading attend to stopping and starting the cars at the drying ground. Obviously the cables in this system are adjustable and can be moved with the tracks as certain parts of the drying grounds are filled and others come into use. Provision has also been made for temporarily anchoring the pulleys through which the cables run. This system is in successful operation at the demon- stration plant of the Canadian Government at Alfred, Ontario, and is reported to decrease materially the cost of handling the peat. In connection with this cable system, the peat is generally run directly from the peat machine into iron cars without bricking. Thence it is taken to the drying ground and there spread into a flat sheet and marked off into bricks by a device called a ‘‘field press.” This is in effect a heavy sledlike platform with a number of thin knives extend- ing out behind, which mark off the peat longitudinally as it is spread and compacted by the passage of the slanting platform; the cross- cutting is done by hand. The platform is slightly higher in front than behind and has an opening at the front end into which the peat is turned from the cars. The platform is moved in only one direction, away from the opening in the bog, and the motive power is a special cable operated from the engine; when it has been drawn the length of the drying ground in one direction it is placed on a specially built car and moved back the length of the drying ground USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 99 for a new start. By using this machine and the cables the number of men employed is reduced and the cost of handling the bricks materially lessened; the very considerable investment for pallets on which to handle the bricks may also be avoided entirely. This plan has been adopted at Alfred, Ontario, and is very effective and suc- cessful there. The peat bricks, after they have become dry and firm enough to handle, are turned and subsequently are stacked in small conical piles, and when sufficiently dry are removed from the drying grounds to the storage sheds or to cars on which they are shipped. The peat bricks are carried to the cars on barrows or light cars pro- vided with racks, some of which are so built that their load can easily be dumped. Elsewhere the cars are simply platforms on which may be placed several handbarrows into which the peat bricks have been loaded as soon as dry. CONVEYERS. Another successful means of peat transportation is movable mechanical conveyers leading from the machine to the drying grounds and back. Such conveyers can be used in places where cars and tracks can not, but they are expensive to install and maintain—at least as made by the foreign manufacturers. The extensive use of various kinds of conveyers for many purposes about factories in the United States makes it seem probable that similar use of them could be made in transporting the loaded pallets of peat bricks to the drying grounds and in returning empty ones. It is also probable that some form of belt conveyer might be made to serve the same purpose. CHAIN CONVEYERS. An even simpler plan has been used in Florida. The peat is first ground and thoroughly reduced to a pulp; then, without being formed mto bricks, it is conveyed by a common belt conveyer in a long movable trough to the drying ground and spread in a sheet about 8 inches thick by a specially devised spreader. This spreader is a wooden scraper mounted on wheels and drawn by a cable. The peat is not marked off into bricks, but as it dries and contracts it breaks into prismatic pieces, which are easily dried and handled. If, as was done at Orlando, Fla., the peat is piled in heaps after grinding, it dries slowly and must be cut into blocks before it can be used to ad- vantage. This operation materially increases the cost of production. AERIAL CABLES. In a plant now being installed in Ireland for making ammonia from peat, cars or buckets moved by an elaborate system of overhead aerial cables are being used to carry the peat from the bog to the plant. This system is expensive but very satisfactory after it is once in operation. 100 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. CENTRIFUGAL AND VACUUM PUMPS. When thoroughly macerated and sufficiently fluid peat is to be dried by spreading, it could probably be pumped from the machine to the drying grounds through iron pipes with flexible connections by centrifugal or vacuum pumps and spread by mechanical means. DRYING ON RACKS. A certain amount of time is gained in drying the peat on racks, as the bricks give up their water somewhat more rapidly when placed above the ground than when lying on it; they also need less attention and require much less space for drying ground; there is, moreover, less likelihood of considerable loss from rain. On the other hand, a larger number of pallets are required; these materially increase the first cost and add to the cost of maintaining the racks. DRYING ON THE GROUND. If the plan is chosen of drying the peat on the cleared surface of the bog, or of laying it out to dry on higher ground, a good sized area should be made ready by clearing off bushes and leveling, so that ample space will be provided; for if the output is 50,000 or more bricks of peat a day, a large area will be covered at the end of a short time. If too little space is allotted for this purpose, the entire plant may be kept idle just when all other conditions are most favorable for production. It may be said that in suitable weather the bricks are dry enough to remove from the pallets after a few days’ exposure and may then be piled in small open piles or spread out on the ground and the pallets used again. If the peat is spread directly on the bog surface and formed into bricks by marking, it must be turned over at least once before piling. The best practice in air drying calls for storing the peat in covered piles when it still contains from 50 to 60 per cent of moisture. Peat so stored dries into tough hard fuel. ADVANTAGES OF A COMPACT PLANT. The advantages gained by confining all operations as closely as possible to the surface of the bog must not be overlooked. If grinding, handling, and drying operations are all kept as near as practicable to the place where excavating is going on and the finished product is all that is moved away, the waste, chiefly water, is left on the bog and the moving of the greater part thereof is avoided. In making plans for equipment it is clearly better to install a small complete plant, with only necessary buildings of cheap construction, than to equip inadequately a large plant housed in expensive struc- tures. It should be kept constantly in mind that the output of a USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 101 well-arranged small plant can be practically doubled by duplicating a part of the machinery, but that a small output from a large machine, with too little power and too few accessories, can be obtained only at a considerably greater cost per ton than from the more complete installation. REQUIREMENTS FOR A COMMERCIAL PLANT. In planning to make air-dried machine peat on a commercial scale the following factors must be regarded as essential to success: (1) Railroad or other cheap transportation from the plant to the expected market. (2) A good-sized area of peat of workable thickness. (3) Machinery for excavating the peat. (4) A peat machine of approved and thoroughly tried pattern. (5) Cars and portable tracks or suitable mechanical conveyers for moving the wet peat from the openings in the bog to the machine, from the machine to the drying grounds or racks, and thence to the storage sheds, or to cars for final shipment. The self-propelling portable plants that combine digging, macerating, and spreading machinery simplify or eliminate (3), (4), and (5). (6) Ground space, cleared and leveled, for drying the prepared peat, and if the peat is formed into bricks at the machine, pallets enough to move the possible output of the machine for several days; room for storing under cover unsold finished product must also be provided. COST OF PLANT. The investment necessary for equipping a plant for making machine peat manifestly will be governed by the output of fuel contemplated, the number, size, and kind of buildings which are projected, the amount of equipment to be provided for digging and transportation, and the method of drying—whether on the ground or on racks. If the plan of spreading on the ground be adopted, and the peat be formed into bricks by cross marking the peat layer after it has been spread from movable troughs, much of the cost of tramways, cars, and pallets will be avoided. Although this plan is in use, it has not been fully described, and details will have to be worked out experimentally which will necessarily detract from its value when immediate pro- duction must be assured. ESTIMATED COST OF PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH AMERICAN MACHINERY. The following tables of costs have been furnished by manufacturers’ of peat machinery, and are for the season of 1909. The estimated cost of a peat-fuel plant, fully equipped with machinery made in the United States, the fuel to be dried in the air, and the average out- 102 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. put to be 50 tons of finished product per day, will be from $20,000 to $25,000, as follows: Estimated cost of plant for a bog that can not be drained. Idipperdred ge ccceescccsyesnc cctcme seat cee eet eeceelcecaee $5, 000 6:6cows, at $250 each ..o0 2. x esac cna edie oeee eee 1, 500 1 scow excavator and elevator for unloading scows......-.....- 1, 000 1 factory building and power house. ...........2-2...2..2.---- 2, 000 1 boiler (100 horsepower) and engine (75 horsepower) and instal- WAS OM ais Siesis ise. cisesd eicie DGlee Sereeceis Dane ede SS Mek eaeenneine 1, 800 1 heater, pump, and fittings. .........-..-.-...2.-.-0220-2 eee 300 1 peat machine and accessories........-.....2.-2.-2--2-2-22-- 1, 500 Pallets, trucks, and railroad tracks from building to drying STOUNGS oie wel cian els diss 2d 2s epee Meee Ae at leteeeeeeee ee 2, 500 Drying sheds and racks.......-.-..-------------------++-++- 3, 000 Storage bins and jscales-i-2o3co% cawene eeu cceseeels ss seemece 2, 500 Miscellaneous machinery, tools, railway side tracks, etc. ..-.....- 1,000 Blacksmith and carpenter shops, tools, etc... ..-..--------+----- 500 Bog, 100 acres, at $20 per acre... 2. 2c. e see ee ee cee eee eee 2, 000 24, 600 Such a plant could be increased to 100-tons daily capacity at a small additional outlay. For a bog that is or can be drained, and has a comparatively level bottom, the dredge could be replaced by a forward-end or side contin- uous-bucket excavator costing $3,500. Tracks and hopper-dump tram cars for this equipment would cost about the same as scows, and a pump and power to run it would be needed to keep the excavation clear of water. A plant with an estimated capacity of 25 tons of finished peat fuel per day will cost about one-third less than one of 50 tons capacity. A portable plant with estimated capacity of 20 tons of finished product per day can be installed for from $5,000 to $7,500. The peat machine, boiler, engine, and digging machinery for this size plant are all installed on a large, broad truck running on a portable wide-gauge track. The costs are divided as follows: Estimated cost of a portable plant. DARGIS 2. aspect ene tae oe eee Soa ene ee rorcusia lots SE ate $1, 000 1 20:ton peatimachine: 2.244. v oss sovs ceettseeeeasepeaeeseeees 1, 350 Imechanical digger. sox229 2eseves pegees Puesee sens nes HERS 250 V boiler'and engines o..2'522.52 5 fee eioaeaseeeas ofed i sskeaeeada 750 Pallets; cars,and track: :. 2.2.22 3.555 caceaigidacsaiiedes eb. scenes 1, 500 Miscellaneous tools and equipment.....................2..-- 250 1 drainage pump and power.............-2.2222-2-22---2---- 250 5, 350 These estimates are for maximum cost, and can doubtless be reduced in many ways by taking advantage of local conditions. Trackless USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 103 self-propelling combined digging, macerating, and spreading ma- chines, capacity from 20 to 75 tons per day, are estimated to cost from $5,000 to $25,000 each. COST OF PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH EUROPEAN MACHINERY. European machinery is generally of simple and strong construction, and in the countries where it is manufactured the cost is low, but the high tariff on machinery and the other charges incidental to its impor- tation into the United States much increase the original price. If German machinery of this type—that which is most often quoted— is sought, the mark (24 cents) must be more than doubled in value and should be reckoned at about 60 cents. On this basis a complete movable plant, operated by steam, and including a traction engine and boiler of from 5 to 8 horsepower; a peat machine with a daily capacity of 30,000 peat bricks (about 15 short tons) per day, elevator belts, and other equipment for transmitting the power, cables, tram- cars, and rails for moving the wet peat from the machine to the drying grounds and the dry peat to the storage sheds; and various smaller articles, all of which are listed at a total cost of 8,500 marks, would cost on the cars in New York about $5,000. The peat machine alone with accessories, is quoted at 2,000 marks ($1,200). Besides the machinery, storage sheds and other structures would need to be pro- vided. This class of plant would require hand digging, and 13 people would be necessary to attend the machine, dig and transport the peat, and work on the drying grounds. A movable plant having double the above capacity and similar but more powerful equipment is listed, exclusive of the buildings, at 14,500 marks ($8,700). This plant requires a force of 16 men to carry on all of the operations, including digging, transporting, drying, and storing the peat. Among the most recently announced European inventions for making machine peat is one tried in Germany during the summer of 1909 and improved the succeeding year. According to published descriptions, this is self-propelling, requires no tracks for drying grounds, is compactly and simply mounted, and while moving over the surface of the bog, which must be drained, it digs, machines, forms, and delivers the peat as bricks on the drying ground. The entire plant weighs about 3 tons (3,000 kilograms) and requires but one man to operate it. The motor, which has a pulling capacity of 20 tons, may be detached and used to draw cars filled with peat from the drying grounds to the storage bins. The cost at the factory in Germany is 13,000 marks, equal to about $7,500 in New York on the above basis. PRICE OF THE BOG. Still another factor to be taken into account is the price of the bog to be utilized. Little discussion has been given this matter because 104 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. undrained peat land in the greater part of the United States is held at a very low price per acre, often merely a nominal value being placed uponit. The question may arise, however, as to the maximum figure per acre that could be paid for the bog if the peat was to be dug and manufactured into fuel or other commercial product. If the peat is of good quality and has an average depth of 5 feet, at least 1,000 tons of air-dry peat fuel can presumably be made from each acre. Hence, if $50 per acre is paid, the cost of the raw material will be 5 cents per ton; to this must be added the interest charges on the unused portions of the bog. These charges may be entirely offset by clearing and using a part of the bog for growing certain kinds of crops, as is often done in Germany. Apparently, however, good or even high prices can always be paid for suitable and accessible bogs without imposing too large a charge for raw material upon the finished product. WORKING CAPITAL. In planning the whole outlay for a peat-fuel plant, a certain part of the available sum should be reserved as working capital, the pro- portion to be determined by the probable future needs of the new business and the length of time before a maximum output can be expected from the plant. PROBABLE OUTPUT FROM A SMALL PLANT. During the season, from the middle of March to the middle of Octo- ber, a peat machine of 25 tons daily capacity should make at least 3,000 tons of finished, dry fuel in nearly any part of the United States, and in favorable seasons the output might easily be 500 or 1,000 tons greater. In the south a longer season and larger output could be expected; at the extreme north the season would be shortened somewhat. The production of such a plant could be doubled by working two shifts of men daily. Such a machine would be much easier to operate at its full capacity, and to provide with full accessory equipment, than one of double the output. Unless the market for the product is known exactly beforehand, planning on a small rather than on a large scale is doubt- less much better. Thesmall, well-planned, and thoroughly equipped plant can manifestly be more easily made successful from the out- set than can a large and efficient machine, for which necessary acces- sories are planned in the future, but which, for the present, must be made to run with poor and insufficient equipment. COST OCF MANUFACTURE. It is generally stated by those who discuss the question that machine peat may be prepared for use at a cost not exceeding $1 per ton. Doubtless this is possible, if only the actual cost of handling : USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 105 be considered, as in Europe, where the cheapest labor is used in the manufacture of peat; the expense for labor in its preparation is gen- erally stated to be below 75 cents per ton. If, however, the reports of test runs and of carefully managed companies be examined, it will be found that, even in Europe, when the entire cost of production is reckoned and the proper charges for raw material, management, selling, maintenance, interest, etc., are made, the estimated expense is often doubled. Hence it is not improbable that even under favor- able conditions the entire cost of making fuel by this method will be more than $1.50 per ton, and will often run as high as $2 or more if all the details of the business are not closely watched. How- ever, if the plants are carefully planned and fully equipped with all necessary machinery, so that slow and inefficient, and hence costly, hand labor is largely eliminated the price of production could prob-. ably be materially reduced below the usual European figures. In one instance in the United States, however, a report was made that the entire cost of digging by machinery, drying, and gathering was about 60 cents per ton of product, but the peat was not formed into bricks, but was spread and gathered by machinery. In another in- stance a cost of less than $1.50 per ton of dry fuel is reported where the peat was dug by hand. SELLING PRICES. Eventually the real or supposed value of a product, the supply and demand, the cost of production and transportation, the competition of similar substances, and the extent to which it can be monopolized, are among the factors which settle its price in open market. At present it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict the prices that machine peat will command in the United States when once it is an established staple in the fuel market. The small quantity that has already been made and sold has been eagerly taken at high prices, often seemingly out of curiosity, but after trial more has been asked for, and no complaints have been made as to the price. A recent report from one of the larger cities stated that a dealer in fuel had asserted that he could sell a number of thousands of tons of air-dry peat bricks at $4.50 per ton if he could get them to sell. Five dollars per ton is frequently mentioned as the retail selling price, even in competition with cheap bituminous coal. In Canada the Depart- ment of Mines reported the demand for peat fuel in 1910 to greatly exceed the supply. That such a price will be maintained where the product is to be used for commercial boiler firing or for manufactur- ing purposes is hardly to be expected, but the wholesale selling price would probably fall to $3 per ton or below. If, however, the cost of production is kept down as it should be and the production of fuel 106 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. is large enough, the last-mentioned price offers a good percentage on the investment necessary to make the commodity. Where the manufacturer is so well placed that he can utilize his men and teams during unfavorable weather and after the producing season is over by conducting a retail business, he can command the highest price attainable in his market. This would apparently be good practice, as it would make feasible the employment of some of the men for the entire year. LENGTH OF OPERATING SEASON. The estimate of the length of the operating season is based on climatic conditions. The work should be started as early in the season as the frost and water will permit the peat to be dug, and carried on until hard frosts become frequent. In Florida, where the temperature rarely sinks below the freezing point, the winter, being a dry season, is the best time for making peat fuel. As one proceeds northward less and less of the winter season is available, until in northern New England, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, peat production, where air drying is used, will be confined to spring and summer—possibly six months, or five north of 45° north latitude. At London, Ontario, the average for several years has been 100 days when peat powder could be gathered from the surface of the bog by a suction collector. The end of the season comes abruptly when frosts are heavy enough to freeze the wet peat bricks, as freezing renders very wet machine peat porous and friable and effectually prevents it from becoming hard and compact. COMPARISON WITH OTHER INDUSTRIES. The facts enumerated above form the basis for some of the objec- tions most frequently urged against attempting the manufacture of air-dried machine peat as a profitable business venture. Sum- marized, they are that the season of manufacture is short; that rainy and damp weather check operations or suspend them entirely; and that the plant and the working force will be employed only a part of the year, and then somewhat irregularly. Manifestly, how- ever, many successful industries are equally handicapped, and just as good reasons exist for discontinuing the beet-sugar industry, lumbering, the narvesting of ice, brickmaking, and other enter- prises, most of which require much larger original investment. THE LABOR QUESTION. In Europe a considerable part of the labor employed in peat-fuel manufacture comes from near-by farms during periods of slack work, so that the working force is constantly changing as one man or USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 107 another returns to his regular occupation. Such a system may not come into existence in the United States, yet possibly it will, if the need for it arises, and it may provide the labor necessary for carry- ing on peat-fuel production. During periods when the weather might be too cold, too moist, or too threatening to permit regular work, a part of the men could be clearing and leveling the surface of the bog, extracting stumps and logs, and. constructing necessary ditches. Even in damp weather wet peat bricks, if protected from actual rain, give up some moisture to the air, so that drying is never actually suspended. By increasing the area of the drying grounds or the number of racks the making and spreading of peat bricks could go on, even when, otherwise, it would be suspended because the bricks produced could not be cared for. If this work can be successfully done in the very moist climate of Ireland, of the region around the Baltic Sea, and even of Iceland, it must be possible in the much drier climate of the United States, where not only is the amount of moisture in the air less, but the seasons are longer and the average temperature of the air several degrees higher—all favoring conditions. ARTIFICIAL DRYING. A system of artificial drying is an ideal of those who have been working on the problem of the sure production of a large amount of peat fuel in a given time from a single plant. Even recently the statement has been made that no considerable quantity of peat fuel could be produced in North America unless artificial drying could be assured, and more than one attempt has been and doubtless will be made in the United States to develop plants so planned that the raw wet peat as it is taken from the bog can be put in at one end of a series of machines and turned out at the other as a dry, market- able fuel, the process being continuous and taking but a few hours. Mechanically, the plan presents no great difficulties and may be worked out in a number of different ways, especially if large capital is available. THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM. Relative to drying machine peat, the problem to be solved might be said to be how to take the wet bricks from the machine and dry them by artificial heat without handling until the product was ready to be shipped. A drying chamber of sufficient size and heated to the right temperature would seem to furnish a speedy solution of this problem, but for the following incontestable facts: If the out- side of the peat bricks is dried rapidly before the water inside has had a chance to evaporate, and the moisture inside is prevented 108 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. from escaping, the bricks shrink, warp, and crack, and become very much more brittle than if dried slowly. The result is an unsatis- factory product. If the drying is permitted to go on slowly the size of the drying chamber must be increased sufficiently to accommo- date the entire output for the number of days that the drying is prolonged, and the number of conveyors or pallets and racks needed to support the bricks must be proportionately increased, so that the investment necessary must be much augmented. The greater size of the chamber needed also increases the cost of heating and moving the air by which the drying is accomplished. Solution of the problem is still further complicated by the fact that the peat makes the best product if machined very wet. The bricks seem to be less likely to crack under ordinary conditions of drying and to be harder, denser, and tougher after drying if the peat from which they are formed contains from 80 to 90 per cent of water; in addition grinding goes on more satisfactorily and smoothly, and with less consumption of power. Complications arise, however, from the fact that the higher the percentage of water in the bricks, the more heat is required to dry them, and the limit is soon passed beyond which more heat units are required to dry the peat than the fuel obtained will give if entirely burned under the best attainable conditions. Stating the case in another form, a pound of good, perfectly dry peat will evaporate 6 pounds of water in a boiler after the boiler- water temperature has been raised to 212° F. This quantity is nearly double that given by good European authorities, but as it is based on a carefully conducted boiler test made at the Government fuel-testing plant at St. Louis, Mo., it may be used as a maximum in order to present the problem as favorably as possible. A ton of peat bricks containing 85 per cent of water consists of 1,700 pounds of water and 300 pounds of completely dry fuel. Therefore, if the water could be evaporated from the peat under as favorable condi- tions as are found in a boiler, enough fuel would be obtained to con- vert into steam 100 pounds more water than must be evaporated, or less than 17 pounds; more fuel than this would be needed to raise the temperature of the peat and the contained water to 212° F. It is evident, therefore, that the complete artificial drying of peat by a process that requires a direct consumption of fuel for the purpose must in itself use more heat units than are yielded by the product, and all of the power and labor involved in preparing the bricks and in handling them after drying must be paid for at a loss. If a large proportion of the heat used is waste from other operations, or if the fuel is such as can not be used in any other way, the problem is quite different; but the above statement holds true, and the cost in heat units will be the same, even if they are not used for any other purpose. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 109 WASTE HEAT MUST BE UTILIZED. It is.apparent, therefore, that any process for preparing peat fuel that involves artificially drying to the air-dried state peat con- taining any considerable percentage of water must be regarded as financially impracticable, unless the heat used is available as a waste product of some other operations. The processes and machinery used for drying products that have a higher selling price than peat fuel, such as heated rollers, vacuum evaporators and presses, are not applicable, since the small margin of profit would all be used up in the costs of operation and maintenance of the complicated and expensive machinery required. Peat that has been dried by exposure to the air until it contains less than 50 per cent of moisture may possibly be dried for fuel, by artificial heat, on a commercial scale, to the air-dried state, by some of the simpler and more efficient types of driers used in other industries, because the certain and rapid completion of the drying at that stage may offset the cost of the fuel used and of the additional handling and plant required. It is less practicable to artificially dry peat with a high water con- tent down to 50 or 60 per cent moisture, because the much greater weight of water to be handled and evaporated in proportion to the quantity of product to be recovered requires much more heat than is needed to reduce the moisture from 50 per cent to the air-dried state. In the eastern United States the amount of moisture in completely air-dried peat rarely exceeds 15 per cent and may be as low as 6 or 8 per cent; it varies as the moisture in the air varies. From the facts given and also from the requirement that all costs in any system of artificial drying must be borne by the product, it is apparent that the problem of artificially drying peat is decidedly com- plex and can be worked out only by those who have had special training and experience in designing and building drying machinery for similar purposes and fully appreciate the difficulties involved in this class of work. Any plan to be successfully incorporated in machinery for completely freeing freshly dug peat from its high percentage of water must provide for the utilization of large quantities of waste heat or of fuel that has no other economic uses. WEIGHT OF WATER TO BE EVAPORATED IN DRYING TO VARIOUS PERCENTAGES OF MOISTURE. The table following shows the weight of water that must be evapo- rated from a ton of peat as its water content is lowered, by 10 per cent stages, from 90 per cent to 10 per cent. 110 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. Weight of water evaporated from a ton of peat as its water content is lowered, by 10 per cent stages, from 90 per cent to 10 per cent. 5 3 ety Water 2 Heioue Total ercentage 0 evaporate eft for of waterin| dry-peat eu for each. 10} each 10 omer of peat. content. per cent per cent evaporated reduction. | reduction. : Pounds. Pounds. Pounds. Pounds. Pounds. 90 200 E8000 eww eceudnas 2500050: || uareeceernws 80 200 800. 0 1,000. 0 1,000. 0 1,000. 0 70 200 466.7 333. 3 666. 7 1, 333. 3 60 200 300. 0 166. 7 500. 0 1, 500. 0 50 200 200. 0 100. 0 400. 0 1,600. 0 40 200 133.3 66.7 333. 3 1,666.7 30 200 85.7 47.6 285.7 1,714.3 20 200 50. 0 35.7 250. 0 1, 750.0 10 200 22.2 27.8 222. 2 1,777.8 It will be seen from the above table and the accompanying figure (fig. 1) that eight-ninths of the water in a ton of wet peat is evaporated WATER IN PEAT, PER CENT WEIGHT OF WATER EVAPORATED FROM 1 TON OF PEAT , POUNDS FicuRE 1.—Relation between weight and moisture content of peat. in reducing the water from 90 per cent to 50 per cent, whereas 1,000 pounds, or five-ninths of the whole, disappears in reducing it from 90 per cent to 80 per cent. It is manifest, also, that only 250 pounds of peat containing 20 per cent of water will be left as the result of all the processes and labor by which a finished product is made from the ton of wet material. PEAT POWDER. There seems to be a much greater possibility of artificially drying peat in the form of powder or small fragments than as machine- formed bricks, because such material can be handled in much smaller space and more rapidly and cheaply than can the bricks. The small USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 111 particles also dry more quick!y and are not injured by warping, cracking, or by becoming brittle. The peat will dry more rapidly if thoroughly macerated before it is put into the dryer than if it is used as dug. Although the fundamental factors involved in drying peat by arti- ficial heat are not much more favorable for producing peat powder than peat bricks, the possibility of making the continuous process a ‘commercial success seems considerably greater for the powder than for the bricks. This opinion is held because the cost of equipment can be made considerably less, heat can be applied more directly, and the expenses for handling the product in powdered form can be reduced materially at all stages after it leaves the peat machine. Moreover, the production of dry peat as powder can be assured at any season of the year, as freezing would scarcely injure it at any step of its prepa- ration. In fact, the powdery condition induced in all types of peat by continued freezing and thawing would then be desirable and would naturally be adopted as one of the preliminary stages of the process. Because peat is readily reduced to a powdered form, has a larger percentage of volatile matter than coal, and burns with a hot flame, it is well adapted for use in powder burners. For this purpose the peat does not need to be crushed as fine as coal because of its more porous structure, which permits the penetration of air, thus insuring complete combustion. It also ignites at a lower temperature than coal. METHODS AND ADVANTAGES OF USE OF POWDERED FUEL. It is well known among users of fuel that various types of familiar materials are now burned as powder by the use of specially designed blast burners. Sawdust and powdered coal have been used for a number of years in burners of this type, and most satisfactory reports have been made by the users. The claims are made that the combus- tion with this form of firing is so complete that there is no black smoke from coal, that the efficiency of the fuel is increased, and that much less attention is required than when firing is done in the ordinary way. The use of powdered coal has passed beyond the experimental stage in Portland cement manufacture and in firing boilers in Europe and the United States. Manufacturers of the improved forms of powder burners claim, for a given type of coal, an increase of from 15 to 20 per cent in efficiency over common grate firing, and facts seem to warrant the claims. Such burners can be regulated for automatic fuel feed, for furnish- ing the proper amount of air, and for blowing the fuel into the fire box, where it burns almost exactly like a gas. 661°—Bull. 16—11——8 112 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. EUROPEAN TESTS. A report of tests made in Sweden in 1907 of peat powder burned in burners of this type is here quoted as cited by Nystrom: ¢ The fuel is very easily ignited in the fire box, but no danger of self-ignition, which is often the case with other powdered and somewhat moist fuels, need be feared. The combustion of the fuel can be easily regulated so that the ash is always free from any unburned particles of carbon, and so that the carbon and hydrocarbons in the fuel will be at once completely burned to carbon dioxide and water, thus giving the highest temperature with either a weak or a strong oxidizing flame (the former with just enough air for the combustion and the latter with excess of air). The com- bustion can also be so regulated that a producer gas with only a small percentage of carbon dioxide and of comparatively high temperature (light-red heat) is formed. This hot gas is then carried to the furnace room proper, where it is burned to carbon dioxide and water, there giving the highest temperature. This producer gas can be used for reduction, or in reheating furnaces where the heated material must be kept from oxidation, and then afterwards burned in other furnaces. The change from oxidizing to reducing flame, or vice versa, can be very easily and quickly made. The quantity of the fuel and the required amount of air can at any time and in either of the above cases be exactly regulated as required, and in case no change is required no attendance is necessary after the valves are once regulated [in the special type of burner examined]. The powder gives the highest temperature which can be employed in furnaces with a considerably less consumption than can be obtained with any other of the solid fuels, and it can be used for the melting of glass, cast iron, steel, soft iron, and other metals. The right temperature is more quickly obtained through the com- bustion of the powder than by the older methods. Furnaces for using this fuel are considerably cheaper to erect than those designed for the use of other fuels. Capt. Ernst Wallgren, chief peat engineer of the Swedish Govern- ment, in an official report of tests made by him in 1910 and preceding years at the Ekelund plant at Back, Sweden, states in substance: (1) Peat powder could be produced at this factory in commercial quantities if the plant were run for a full season at its present estimated annual capacity of 10,000 metric tons at a maximum cost of 8.50 kroner ($2.30) a metric ton (2,204 pounds), all charges included. (2) This cost could be reduced by increasing the size of the plant and the output or by making contemplated changes in equipment. (3) The peat powder when burned by the method used at Back was equal in fuel value to the best English coal, ton for ton. (4) This discovery makes Sweden independent of other countries for fuel supplies for industrial uses. These reports and those that have come independently from Canada,’ where peat powder is used to a limited extent for boiler firing, show clearly that this type of fuel is an especially desirable one, which needs more extended and careful examination, so that it may a Nystrom, E., Peat and lignite; their manufacture and uses in Europe, Canada Department, of Mines, Mines Branch, 1908, pp. 171-172. > See also Can. Dept. Mines, Mines Branch, Bull. No. 4, 2d ed., 1910, pp. 19 and 31 to 44. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 113 have a greater use for cement manufacture and steam production generally if it proves to be as valuable as the reports indicate. The peat for making peat powder by the system mentioned (Ekelund’s) is dug, machined, spread on the bog, cut into bricks, and dried by exposure to the air to 50 per cent water content. The bricks are then crushed and the powder dried in drying furnaces. SPECIAL GATHERING SYSTEMS. For the preparation of peat in the powdered form a system of gath- ering the peat as air-dried powder by a special type of collector has been developed in Canada. The cleared and smooth surface of the bog is lightly stirred by harrowing, and after a few hours’ exposure to the wind and sun the thin layer becomes dried to 30 per cent or less of moisture. The dry particles are then gathered by a pneumatic collector operated on the same principle as the exhaust carpet cleaners that are now so generally used. The collector is operated electrically and runs on rails, which can be moved whenever necessary. The peat, with its low percentage of moisture, is taken to the plant in the cars that receive it from the collector; there it is screened and its moisture content still further lowered by artificial drying, after which the powder is ready for use. It is shipped in bags and may be stored without deteriorating. The statement is made that each collector on a favorable day will gather from 40 to 50 tons of air-dried peat pow- der from a drained and well-prepared bog. Although this method of drying peat powder is manifestly open to the same objection as any form of drying out of doors, it is equally clear that by increasing the number of collectors and the area of the surface from which the air-dried material can be gathered in favor- able weather great quantities of air-dried powder may be stored for complete drying during rainy days or during the winter, especially if the peat is produced in quantities.¢ This dry material could be stored either in permanent and strong storage bins, constructed for the purpose, or in large stock piles, a Another system of producing air-dry peat powder was invented in Canada. It is now in use there at the peat-briquet plant of the inventor and in the United States at two factories producing peat for fertilizer uses. The simple and efficient machinery used consists of three separate machines—a digger and spreader, a scraper, and a collector. Each of these is mounted on broad roller wheels and driven by electric motors, to which current is supplied from a central generator through trailing, insulated wires. The digger and spreader, although mounted and working together are distinct machines. The digger, a plow-like disk revolving at one side of the machine, cuts the peat to a depth of 12 to 18 inches and delivers it toa belt conveyor. This draws it across the front of the machine and up a chute projecting from the side opposite the digging disk. At the upper end of the chute is arapidly revolving propeller-shaped fan, which tears the peat into bits and scatters it broadcast over the surface of the bog, which is stripped of all vegetation before being used as drying ground. The powdered peat dries in a few hours and is scraped into windrows by the scraper which at the same time rolls the surface, thus preparing it for the next spread- ing. The windrows are made near portable tramways at the sides of the drying fields, and the peat is mechanically loaded on tram cars by a simple loading machine and drawn by an electric locomotive to the storage piles or sheds, after which drying is completed by artificial heat. This system must be used on dry drained bogs. , 114 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. which, although they might become wet and frozen on the outside, would remain dry and free from frost a short distance below the sur- face, because penetration of the mass by either water or cold would be very slow, owing to the insulating and nonabsorbent qualities of the material. COST OF EQUIPMENT. The cost of erecting and fitting out a plant for making peat pow- der is estimated by the inventor of the Swedish process mentioned to be about $100,000 for a plant having an output of 20,000 tons per year. This amount includes the cost of the peat deposit; the cost of manufacture is given as less than $2.35 per ton. No figures are available for publication regarding the cost of a fac- ‘ory using the Canadian processes and equipment, but the cost of pro- duction is said to be less than $1.50 per ton. The process obviously can be used only during the warmer months of the year. TYPES OF DRYING MACHINES. In Europe, lignite, or brown coal, is dried by artificial heat before it is briquetted. Two types of driers have been developed and are now used for this purpose—the steam plate and the rotary, the latter being the more recent and the more efficient. In the steam-plate system the powdered lignite is dried on hollow cast-iron plates heated by steam from the engines or from the bri- quetting presses of the plant. The plates are 16.5 feet in diameter and are supported one above the other in a series of twenty or more, with intervening spaces. A central shaft bears a series of arms which, when the shaft is turned, constantly stir the material that is being dried. Provision is made for hastening the drying by changing the air as often as it becomes saturated with moisture. In such driers the water of the lignite is reduced from 30 to 40 per cent or more to 12 to 18 per cent, which is the content most suitable for briquetting this material. In the best European type of rotary drier the essential part is a large boiler-plate cylinder inclined at an angle of 7°, supported by and turned on trunnions. A large number of 4-inch tubes run from end to end of the cylinder and through these the material to be dried passes. It is fed in at the upper end and dried by the heat of the steam that is turned through the trunnions into the space around the tubes. The steam is supplied from the exhaust from the engines and briquetting presses. The powder dries during its passage through the tubes, and is mixed, as the cylinder revolves, by cleats or baffle-irons fastened to the inside of the tubes. Such driers have been used to some extent for drying peat, and if the moisture content were not too high could be used in the production of peat powder for fuel, for briquetting, or for fertilizer filler. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 115 In the United States a number of novel machines for drying peat have been invented and installed in factories for the manufacture of peat briquets, but as none of the plants are now operating, the ma- chines seemingly failed to do what was expected of them. In the manufacture of peat powder for fertilizer filler, however, driers of the rotary type, originally designed for drying clay, shale, and materials used in brick, cement, and fertilizer making before they are ground, have been used for some years to complete the drying of peat that has been partly air dried. Two forms of rotary driers are used for drying peat in the United States—single-shell and double-shell. Both types are long cylindrical tubes made of iron or steel plates bolted together as in boiler con- struction. The tubes vary in length and diameter according to their estimated capacity for drying. They are mounted in a slightly in- clined position, and are supported and rotated by friction rollers or geared wheels placed near either end. At the higher or inlet end, if single-shell driers, the cylinder is generally placed directly against the open end of the combustion chamber of a furnace, and the lower end opens directly into a brick chamber that is closely connected with the smokestack. The cylin- der is therefore a part of the flue through which the products of com- bustion pass from the furnace to the air. Usually there is an ex- haust or a blowing fan to increase the combustion or hasten the passage of hot gases through the tube. Narrow iron shelves, projecting at an angle inward and running, either spirally or otherwise, the entire length of the tube, are securely bolted to the inside of the shell. These shelves carry the peat from the bottom to the top of the cylinder and allow it to fall again to the bottom through the current of heated gases and air, thus assuring more rapid and thorough drying than would be possible if the inside of the cylinder were smooth. The material to be dried enters at the higher end of the drier at the hottest part and is slowly carried to the lower and cool end by the rotation. It ultimately falls into the receiving chamber as a dry powder. Peat so dried contains less than 10 per cent of moisture. The efficiency of such a drier depends on the relationship between the quantity of water to be evaporated and the quantity of heat units which must be made available to convert the water into vapor. To attain the highest efficiency, the heat generated in the furnace should all be absorbed by the material that is being dried, and the gases and air passing through the drier should leave it cold. In practice, however, driers are often much overheated, which results in great losses of heat through radiation from the overheated shell and the high temperature of the gases leaving the tube. The remedy is to use longer cylinders of larger diameter, and to reduce 116 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. the moisture content of the peat as much as possible by air drying before putting it in the drier. A double-shell drier, as the name implies, has two cylinders, one securely fastened concentrically inside the other, with a space between them. The hot gases from a furnace enter the inner tube of the drier at one end. In the same end the material to be dried is placed in the chamber between the inner and outer shells. After traversing the length of the inner tube the gases enter and pass through the outer one and are deprived of the rest of their heat by contact with the substance being dried. The circulation is maintained by exhaust fans at the outlet end. As the heated gases pass twice through the length of the cylinder, more time is allowed them to give up their heat to the substance being dried. A double-tube drier should, therefore, be more efficient, and give a greater amount of dry product per unit of fuel consumed than a single-tube drier. As the price obtained for the product of the driers is considerably more than that which could be obtained for the same material if it were to be used as fuel, a somewhat greater outlay can be borne in preparing it for market; but experience has demonstrated, as would be expected, that the more the water in peat is reduced before putting the peat into the drier the lower the cost of production becomes. Presumably, therefore, by using some of the types of driers developed for drying tankage, garbage, and other similar materials, peat, in the form of a powder that has been partly air dried can be dried to a moisture content of from 10 to 15 per cent with profit, especially if a part or all of the heat used be derived from stack gases or exhaust steam. PEAT BRIQUETS. ADVANTAGES OF BRIQUETTING. Manifestly peat powder can not be burned economically in an ordi- nary fire box or stove, because it packs so that no air can get through it, or it falls through the grates if stirred. Such fuel is also open to the objections that are urged against other forms of peat fuel, and is costly to transport as compared with coal. To avoid these difficul- ties the proposal has been made to shape the dry powder into bri- quets by the use of specially designed briquetting presses. In Europe, where peat is commonly used, and where for a considerable time lignite and poor grades of coal have been put on the market in briquetted form, and have found ready and constantly’ increasing sales, it is not surprising that peat should have been briquetted at an early date. PROPERTIES. Peat, when briquetted, makes a most attractive type of fuel, as the briquets are uniform in size, may be of cylindrical, ovoid, pris- USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 117 matic, pillow, or other shape, and often have a highly glazed black surface. The briquets are clean to handle; they are also compact and dense, so that they occupy less space, and are more easily trans- ported and stored than the same weight of the same peat could be if in any of the other forms described. They burn less rapidly than cut or machine peat, and herice give less trouble in firing for power pro- duction than do other kinds of peat fuel. It has been pointed out, however, that peat briquets are likely to crack and crumble when handled roughly, and to break down in the fire into a powder, whereas machine-peat bricks burn like a piece of good coal, or wood, without falling apart. The briquets are also easily wet by rain, and are quickly disintegrated by exposure to storms; therefore they must be stored under cover and shipped by rail in weatherproof cars. METHODS OF MANUFACTURE. In the parts of Europe where peat briquets are made the peat is cut or dug from the bog and is allowed to dry in the air until the water is reduced to about 40 per cent. The peat is then powdered and dried artificially to about 15 per cent moisture, after which it is briquetted or stored for future briquetting. The Canadian method of drying peat on the surface of the bog in a thin layer and picking up the dry material at frequent intervals with a vacuum dust collector does away with most of the cost of drying and subsequent handling, so that after a brief exposure to artificial heat it can be satisfactorily briquetted. The process was primarily designed by its inventors to produce at the lowest cost air-dried peat for making briquets. TYPES OF PRESSES. The essential part of a plant for making peat briquets is the bri- quetting press. Such presses are of two general types—the open and the closed mold. In the open-mold type the dry peat powder is introduced into a straight tube, or mold, of circular or other shaped cross section, and compressed by a tightly fitting piston that exerts a pressure of from 18,000 to 30,000 pounds per square inch. Suffi- cient resistance is offered by the friction of the peat on the sides of the tube to press it into a solid block or briquet, while at the same time the air is forced from the peat. With each stroke of the piston a new charge of peat enters the mold and a finished briquet leaves the outlet end; the briquets already made act as a cushion and, in fact, form the bottom of the mold. The friction is sufficient in presses constructed on this principle to raise the temperature of the mass enough to release some of the tarry compounds of the peat, 118 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. and these cover the sides of the briquets with a highly polished glaze. A chief objection to this form of press is said to be that the constant heating and friction produce great wear on the molds, and the plates forming them must be removed every few days and reground, so that after a comparatively short life they have to be renewed. The number of briquets that can be made with such a machine manifestly depends upon the number of strokes of the plunger to the minute. For briquetting lignite, this may be as low as 80 or as high as 130; thus the number of briquets made in a minute lies between these limits. The output of peat briquets is usually about 100 a minute, because the peat powder is sometimes blown from the mold if the press is run at greater speed. In briquetting presses of the closed-mold type various forms of rollers and plates, or plungers and wheels or plates, or even special forms of crown wheels, have been employed for the two halves or parts of the molds. The advantage claimed for presses of this type is their greater rapidity and durability, but mechanical difficulties are encountered in getting sufficient pressure to make solid briquets and in keeping the two halves of the mold in exact adjustment. This form of press is sometimes used when a binder of pitch or other resinous or tarry matter is used to cement the particles of fuel to- gether to make the briquets less breakable when handled or burned. European briquetting presses of the open-mold type are made in three sizes—a small size, turning out from 16.5 to 22 tons of finished briquets in 24 hours; a medium size, having a capacity of 33 to 44 tons in 24 hours; and a large size, which makes from 44 to 55 tons in 24 hours. To produce a ton of peat briquets costs considerably more than to produce a ton of machine peat because of the greater power required, the artificial drying, and the additional expenses for stronger build- ings and more complicated and powerful machinery. TREATMENT OF PEAT PRELIMINARY TO BRIQUETTING,. All European factories for making peat briquets are reported to use cut peat of the more compact kinds as raw material, because it can be ground more quickly and thoroughly than the tougher machine peat. The peat is treated exactly as if it were to be used as the cut product, until the water is reduced by evaporation to 40 or 50 per cent; it is then taken to the plant and ground while still moist so as to avoid the dust and resistance to the mill which result from grinding with less water. It is then screened. The drying is finished in a dryer, and the dry powder is either briquetted immediately or stored. If ground when too dry, considerable loss occurs from the finer particles flying about as dust, the presence of which in air is annoying and dangerous to the workman, and under certain conditions may cause disastrous USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 119 explosions. The dry peat is also hard to grind and rapidly wears the milling machinery. There is no record either in Europe or America of a successful plant for making peat briquets by a continuous process that dries the peat wholly by artificial heat. COST OF PLANTS. European briquetting presses of 50 tons capacity in 24 hours, which is the size most often considered, need engines of about 100 horsepower, operated by high-pressure steam; in the best equipped European plants the steam is superheated to about 665° F. and the boiler pressure is carried at about 150 pounds. The exhaust steam from the engines is used in the driers, at about 30 pounds pressure, and is returned to the boilers after condensation under about the same pressure. A briquetting plant, fully equipped with the best types of German machinery, including a drier, will cost two to three times as much as a plant for making cut and machine peat, even if only a single press with a capacity of about 50 tons per day is contemplated. At least three distinct presses for briquetting peat have been in- vented and tried on a factory scale in Canada. Two are of the closed- mold type, although working on very different principles; the third employs an open mold. The peat used for these plants was dried as much as possible on the surface of the bog, but the final drying was done in specially designed rotary driers. The essential details of these plants have been described by Ny- strom.” Of these plants only one was operated in 1908, and no figures as to the cost of installation or of the production of the briquets are available. Two of them made a small output in 1910. Several forms of presses of American construction for briquetting coal and lignite, and some designed for peat, have been developed and are on the mar- ket, and probably these could be installed at somewhat lower cost than any which have been made abroad. It is doubtful, however, whether a bog can be purchased, proper buildings erected for housing the machinery and the finished briquets, and the necessary machinery bought for digging, grinding, drying, and briquetting the peat for an output of about 50 tons of briquets each 24 hours for less than $60,000 to $75,000, although estimates as low as $35,000 have been made based on untried machinery. The plan of drying the peat upon the surface of the bog and gath- ering it as a dry powder with a small amount of water, because a part of the cost of preparing the peat for briquetting is thus eliminated, should reduce the primary cost of the plant by a certain amount. It @ Nystrom, E., Peat and lignite; their manufacture and uses in Europe. Canada Department of Mines, Mines Branch, 1908, pp. 148-157. 120 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. is questionable, however, whether the cost of collecting machines and their installation would not be almost as great as that of the rotary driers which they would in part displace. Their operation by electric power might prove to be nearly as expensive as that of steam driers utilizing waste steam. The operation of the briquetting part of a plant during the winter could be made possible by operating a number of the collecting ma- chines during the favorable months of the drying season and storing in stock piles or storage bins the excess of dry peat as it was taken from the surface of the bog. If storage under cover were adopted, the construction of the necessary buildings would be an added charge. The following statement, which shows the cost of a briquetting plant with an estimated output of 50 tons of peat briquets per day, is quoted from an estimate furnished by Mr. F. H. Mason,? when United States consul general in Berlin, Germany: Building sic ovsucesreawiee <2 ys oe ceceseseeeeass esau escsses $14, 280 Machinery:)o:3 saci ncedes sere. diese ee oes ot cael 17, 850 Steam engines and Axtures.. ccs sesceeedd dene cee ese cieiee 3, 570 PP TAMA W AY iB 0 oi6 sc iaiceocascasvlaioicew $12 42d ora cud Aue, ceeieteiaverinajene + 2 SOR are 3, 570° 39, 270 These figures are approximate only and will have to be considerably modified to meet present conditions. The American agent of one of the leading German builders of briquetting plants furnished the following estimates for a peat briquet- ting plant having an estimated capacity of 40,000 kilograms (about 44 short tons) of finished briquets in 24 hours: The complete mechanical plant, which costs 201,000 marks ($48,240) in Germany, includes two large steam boilers, necessary engines, conveyers, elevators, electrical generators and motors, a rotary drier, a powerful press, sieves, and the numerous other items of machinery needed to carry on successfully the rather complicated processes that seem required to produce marketable peat briquets steadily and in quantity. The duties, trans-Atlanite freight, and other charges to which foreign machinery importations are subject more than double the list prices, so that the mark must be reckoned as equivalent to 60 cents; thus the estimated cost of this machinery becomes about $120,000 when delivered to the American purchaser on the cars in New York. Many of the items included in this list could doubtless be replaced at a less cost by those of American manufacture. To successfully install the briquetting press and drier, however, would require the importation of some of the other machinery designed to accompany @ Mason, F. H., Special Consular Reports, Vol. XXVI, 1903, p. 81. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 121 them, so that it is probable that a briquetting plant of the capacity given above could scarcely be equipped for less than $70,000 to $75,000. To this amount must be added the cost of special digging machinery, buildings, railroad sidings, etc., which would mean a total investment probably exceeding $100,000. COMPARATIVE COST OF BRIQUETS AND MACHINE PEAT. The cost per ton of making peat briquets must of necessity be ereater than that of making machine peat, because a larger invest- ment in plant is needed and this involves larger charges for interest and depreciation. The more complicated machinery requires more skillful and better-paid men, and the machinery requires greater power, and therefore a greater consumption of fuel. The wear on the briquetting presses is excessive, which makes the cost of main- tenance high in comparison with that of the more simple peat machine, and the cost of artificial drying, of grinding the peat, and of briquet- ting must also be taken into consideration. In view of all these factors, and the added cost of digging and partially air drying the peat and of getting it to the briquetting machinery, peat briquets can probably not be made under American conditions with any machinery now in use in Europe at much less than $3 per ton, and conditions would have to be excellent if this price were not exceeded. What can be done with peat briquetting machinery and plants of American design and construction now in process of development or installation can not be predicted at this time. COMPARATIVE FUEL EFFICIENCY. Naturally, the inquiry will be made whether the added expense of equipment and the greater cost of making peat briquets is justified by a corresponding increase in the efficiency of the fuel. Seemingly it is not, because the cost of production is at least one-third greater than for machine peat, whereas, according to Nystrom,? the heat- ing value is increased only about 15 per cent. Actual analyses of peat from the same deposit at Black Lake, N. Y., and prepared in different ways, are given below. The samples were taken at random from considerable quantities of similar material which had been given identical treatment, but possibly gathered at different times; that is, the samples were not prepared especially for these analyses. aNystrom, E., op. cit., pp. 147-148. 122 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. Analyses of peat to show the effect of method of preparation on heating value of a given peat. Volatil Heating value. Lab. Mois- | YO@UWE | Fixed Sul- Character of fuel. com- Ash. No. ture. e carbon. phur. bustible. Calories. | B. t. u. 6436 | Raw peat: Air dried= = ic2.cnes Kerr, W. A., Peat and its products, 1905, p. 74. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 149 a certain engine using ordinary coal or illuminating gas developed 80 horsepower, and with blast-furnace gas 67 horsepower, a differ- ence of 16 per cent only, whereas the calorific values of the gases were about 600 British thermal units and 120 British thermal units, respectively, to the cubic foot, or a ratio of 5 to 1. Wyer®@ also points out the same fact, on the authority of one of the large manu- facturers of gas engines. He states that ‘‘an engine that will develop 100 horsepower with natural gas will give only about 80 horsepower with producer gas, a loss of 20 per cent. With a 200-horsepower engine this loss will be about 15 per cent, and with sizes above 300 horsepower it would be about 10 per cent.” He does not point out, however, that the calorific value of natural gas is 978 British thermal units per cubic foot and of producer gas from anthra- cite coal only 144 British thermal units per cubic foot, according to figures cited by him, or about one-seventh as great. Thus the loss in power is not at all commensurate with the relative heating values of the two kinds of gas, the poor gas being much more efficient than the rich one, even in an engine designed for using the better gas. The principle brought out by these statements has been found to be of such general application that gas engineers confidently predict that the power gas of the near future will be producer gas having a heat value of about 100 British thermal units per cubic foot. The development of the power necessary for operating the great steel- making and manufacturing plant at Gary, Ind., by means of gas engines using blast-furnace gas entirely, shows how certain is the trend in the direction of the use of gases of low thermal efficiency. Producer gas was generated from many kinds of low-grade and refuse Coals at the fuel-testing plants of the United States Geological Survey at St. Louis, Norfolk, and Pittsburgh, and in the reports? of the operations of these plants will be found full accounts of the work done and the impressive and valuable results obtained. VOLUME OF PRODUCER GAS OBTAINED FROM PEAT. The quantity of producer gas to be obtained from peat is large, and depends, as has been stated, on the quality of the peat and the form of the producer. Thus, Kerr,’ quoting from R. Aakermann, states that in Sweden the quantity of gas generated from 100 kilo- grams (220.4 pounds) of peat was 252 cubic meters (8,900 cubic feet), or about 80,000 cubic feet per ton of 2,000 pounds. The composition of this gas is given in the preceding table. Nystrom,’ on the other aWyer, S. 8., Producer gas and gas producers, 2d ed., 1907, p. 229. bU. S. Geol. Survey Bulls. Nos. 290 and 332; Prof. Paper No. 48. See also Bulls. Nos. 7, 9, and 13, Bureau of Mines. ¢ Kerr, W. A., Peat and its products, p. 84. . aNystrom, E., Peat and lignite; their manufacture and use in Europe: Canada Department of Mines Mines Branch, 1908, p. 227. 150 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. hand, states that 48,000 cubic feet of gas were obtained per ton of water-free peat substance, the gas having a calorific value of 152 British thermal units per cubic foot. Ryan® reports that 100 cubic yards of gas, with a calorific value of 150 British thermal units per cubic foot, were yielded by 100 pounds of peat containing 26 per cent of water, or 54,000 cubic feet per short ton, in a Koerting suction gas producer, and that a Ziegler pressure gas producer is capable of affording 180 cubic yards of producer gas, having a calorific value of 135 British thermal units per cubic foot, from 100 pounds of average peat, or 97,200 cubic feet per ton. These figures are incorporated in the following table for purposes of reference: Yield and calorific value of producer gas per ton of peat. Yield of | Calorific producer {valueper| Percentage of Make and type of gas Source of peat. gas per cubic water in peat Authority. producer. short ton | foot of used. of peat. gas. Cubic feet. | B.t.u. : MONG die ee sn ex naneetan Tal Vy ceeewen evens 48,000 152.0 | Water free....| Nystrom. Koerting suction. . -| Germany re 150.0 | 26 per cent....] Ryan. Dierecraisssseiciersicis -| Sweden... . Kerr. MONG 30 ecn:-c-a's:al5.5}0 .| England... . Ziegler pressure Germany a 97,200 WB5z0! | oc. clarence ate ».| Ryan. Loomis- Pettibone } North Carolina. ... 72,400 109.7 | Water free....| U.S. Geol. Survey. down-draft. Taylor pressure No. 7.../ Florida........-.-. 76, 600 ZOD | essen QO sdeviisicere Do. CALORIFIC VALUE OF PRODUCER GAS. The calorific value of producer gas derived from peat is approxi- mately the same as that from coal. Nystrom ® reports the follow- ing results of a number of carefully conducted tests made in different parts of Europe to find the calorific value per cubic foot of producer gas obtained from peat: Calorific value of producer gas derived from European peat. Calorific Make of gas producer. Locality. Bear ee Remarks. of gas. B.t.u. KKeOertin go osis us ce st ankinsccisens Skabersjo, Sweden.... 132 | Producer specially designed for peat. Titers .scisscsessnanekenns 0 Nymphenburg, Ger- 114 | Average of 10 analyses; producer many. built for using peat. Mond.............-.200.22505- Stockton, England.... 145 | Producer built for using soft coal. DOs caing ce see wees Winnington, England. 152 Do. In the United States, records of only a small number of experiments with peat in gas producers are available, and seemingly very few such tests have been made. The two experimental runs made in a Ryan, Hugh, Reports upon the Irish peat industries, Pt. II: Econ. Proc. Roy. Soc., Dublin, vol. 1, pt. 13, pp. 524-526. b Op. cit. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 151 1905 and 1906 at the fuel-testing plant of the United’ States Geo- logical Survey at St. Louis, Mo., are of importance and interest not only because they were probably the first trials in this country of peat in a gas producer, but because they were made in a large pressure producer built to use anthracite. Unfortunately, in one of these tests the quantity of peat available was too small for a full test run, so that the results obtained must be considered incomplete. In the first of these tests air-dried machine peat from near Halifax, Mass., was used. The average calorific value of the gas was 166 British thermal units per cubic foot. In the second test, of fifty hours’ duration, air-dried machine peat from near Orlando, Fla., was used. The average calorific value of the gas was 175 British thermal units per cubic foot. A third test was made in a down-draft producer designed for bituminous fuels, at the fuel-testing plant of the United States Geo- logical Survey at Pittsburgh, in January, 1909, with air-dried machine peat from North Carolina. The average calorific value of the gas was 109.7 British thermal units per cubic foot, about the average value of the gas obtained from coal in this type of producer. In order to show that these values are not materially different from those of producer gas developed from bituminous coal in the same gas producer and under the same test conditions, the first two values may be compared with those obtained from tests with this fuel made at the St. Louis fuel-testing plant during the same year. Thermal value of producer gas made from bituminous coal. B. t. u. per cubic foot. Indiana (average) isis sceeee ood seisseliesacege cay sece deine asceleu's 147 Kontuckyieuenp: e222 28e 22 te ectaxetoxececesectacuecametues tens 28 164 Tlinoiss cea vee sneeess Loans ee eeeaeecu ces teceaeged saws yee tees 143 ODIO seeuicerenuwes'ss oes cest esse eeee sew ndeeeeeseiae ama bsene 157 Pennsylvaliaas 29222543 tsg veseeedencateem ei kee eee ese es 142 Virginia cece tae cc'e pees eects eaters A oeeaaner vied 157 North, Dakotaigaite: J225 se eceatnsccc aca cecetaleanceaee sae eae 161 The calorific value per cubic foot of standard gas obtained from fifty-six producer-gas tests with bituminous coal, made from January 1, 1906, to March 1, 1907, with the same gas producer, were: 4 Average, 151 British thermal units; maximum, 171.6 British thermal units; minimum, 122.5 British thermal units. From these results it is apparent that none of the coals gave as rich a producer gas as the Florida peat, and that the gas from the Massachusetts peat was better than the average of that made from the fifty-six samples of coal tested. @U.8. Geol. Survey Bull. No. 332, p. 28. 152 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. It follows from these comparisons that the types of American peat and those of foreign peat here cited were as good fuel in the gas pro- ducer as the kinds of coal tested, so far as the calorific value of the gas is concerned. Another significant fact brought out by the tests made by the United States Geological Survey was that the single full test run made with peat as fuel in the gas producer gave results that sur- passed, in the horsepower developed, those obtained from the best of the kinds of coal used in boiler tests. The same results were obtained in the shorter run in which Massachusetts peat was used. That is, more power was developed from a ton of peat converted into producer gas and used in a gas engine than a ton of any kind of coal gave in the steam engine during the entire series of boiler tests conducted under standard test conditions. Although too much emphasis must not be laid on the results of a single experimental run or on two tests, manifestly the value of peat as fuel is greatly increased by the use of a gas producer. In the two cases cited, under rigid test conditions in a gas producer designed for a very different sort of fuel, the peat, with a calorific value ratio to bituminous coal of 1 :1.8, gave more power by being gasified and then used in a gas engine than an equal weight of coal did by being used under a boiler to generate steam for a steam engine. GAS-PRODUCER TESTS BY THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. The following is an account of the method of proceaure in tests of peat as a source of producer gas in the only complete trial of this fuel yet made by the United States Geological Survey. The account includes, however, the results obtained from both Massachusetts and Florida samples. MASSACHUSETTS NO. 1. Peat briquets from a bog near Halifax, Plymouth County, Mass. They were fur- nished by Prof. C. L. Norton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Mass., and shipped under the supervision of Mr. J. S. Burrows. The sample con- sisted of a small amount (less than 5 tons) of peat which had been macerated and pressed into bricks and then dried, and it was impossible to run a test of sufficient length to eliminate the factor of uncertainty. It was demonstrated, however, that a satisfactory gas could be obtained and no trouble was experienced in manipulating the load, but owing to the small supply of peat it was necessary to make the founda- tion of the fuel bed out of another fuel—IIlinois coal. Considering this fact, and that the amount of peat furnished made it possible to conduct a test of only nine hours’ duration, it is possible that the results as given below are somewhat erroneous. The figures are given for what they are worth, as they furnish an approximate idea, of the possibilities of peat fuel in the gas producer, although they can not be regarded as official results. It is impossible to tell exactly what portion of the gas was due to Illinois coal and what portion to the peat alone. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 153 The results of the tests of Massachusetts peat were as follows: Producer-gas test— Test 97; Massachusetts No. 1. Average electrical horsepower... . 2.22... 22. eee eee eee ee ee eee teen nee ence nee ee cn eaeeeene Average B. t. u. gas per cubic foot Bane Motal meat fireds(POUMGS) so sjs.c2c: 53. ohs, catiaasards sib ad ialaadcaceialeraratasaie si niels aeiatbreroro bee tem cndae Sune tele sla ceieseae ule Peat consumed in producer per horsepower hour. Peat as Combus- fired. | Dry Peat. | ‘tiple. Per electrical horsepower: Pounds. EOE a Available for outside purposes........-..------.----222+---2002+ 3.77 i 44 Developed’at switchboard............2-.22-. 2c cece eee eee eee 3.60 1.81 1. 38 Per brake horsepower: Available for outside purposes 3.20 1.61 1.22 Developed at engine 3.06 1.54 1.17 ANALYSES. Peat: Gas by volume: MOISUUNG sie 55 Sc psd se auiaciae Fy edindes Hee 49. 80 Carbon dioxide (CO,).................-- 10. 50 Volatile matter . -- 27,27 Carbon monoxide (CO). - ---- 22.50 Fixed carbon 10. 88 Hydrogen (Ha)... 13.90 ANS TN fash anstaiosey sian read ars aS stea never chet Se 12.05 Methane (CH4).-. t Nitrogen (Noe).... 100. 00 SulphuP ics osesecescsscmvesacees rosea 34 FLORIDA NO. 1. In connection with this test of a small quantity of Massachusetts peat, it is deemed advisable to refer briefly to a more elaborate test of peat bricks obtained from a bog located near Orlando, Orange County, Fla., on the Seaboard Air Line Railway, and designated Florida No. 1. The following notes are from Bulletin 332 of the United States Geological Survey: This sample consisted of machined peat, made by a commercial process and sun dried, and was used in steaming test 386 and producer-gas test 117. By the process mentioned the peat first passes through a condenser, which disintegrates the material and destroys the fiber. From the condenser the peat is elevated to a molding machine, consisting of a cylinder and two vertical molding wheels. Through the cylinder passes a vertical shaft, to which are attached revolving arms set in a screw form. Between these arms are set perforated plates. The peat, passing into the top of the cylinder, is forced down through the plates to the molding wheel. From the molding wheel the bricks, which are 8 by 4 by 24 inches, are dropped on boards or pallets, which are being continuously pushed under the machine by a link-belt carrier. These pallets, containing 6 bricks each, are loaded on wagons 50 to the load, and are hauled to the drying ground, where the bricks are allowed to lose from 60 to 75 per cent of their moisture content. The peat was furnished by the Orlando Water & Light Co. Two samples were taken for analysis. Sample 3268 is raw peat just as it comes from the bog and sample 3269 is one of the bricks as it came from the machine before delivery to the drying ground. 154 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. Chemical analyses of Florida No. 1. Car St i Bog samples. | sample.a| test 385.5 Laboratory Nos22: 32¢o22,jccanedside semana reeess eee ond 3268 3269 3270 Alr-AryIng 1OSSsgsc. ibs a ee eae tn eee nn ae aner es 91.70 84.70 9200 peeucieee sete Proximate: MOISCUTO aces cto, ce eeril a are dua Sater sarrgrniees Sas cman 92. 41 88. 40 21.00 17.21 Volatile matter... ee 4.68 7.28 51.72 51.01 Fixed carbon.... 85 6.93 49 5.18 57.77 2. 89 25. 20 8.37 -59 Calories. a. 22 22 cad pn ew accom tantsetnhcowaban ated Us heeaedtoe APOIO ciasec seek octal tte Beste isin British thermal: units: 22 222<20csec8ceeeoseseeesctwn|eateeedoot S120 Vacca hapecececeadeice Calculated from ultimate analysis— CAL OTICS s cascnsepcrarensrdiac eels pair ema tersis arainteeite eie nlerm cersrareta shai fnterarhotsini! B38 fac anc meeaes lead canoe tine British: (hermal waitss «2s 21 2ciesscainsiscausceteaeaknoemecossak MOOS, iataintersiecicle wimercieticinegia's a Figured from sample from producer-gas test 1 > Proximate analysis of fuel as fired; ultimate amiss of dry fuel figured from car sample. In starting the producer-gas test (test 117) the fuel bed was built up entirely of the Florida peat and the usual preliminary run was conducted before the official test began. The total amount of peat consumed in the producer in the 50-hour run was 29,250 pounds, or 585 pounds per hour. The average calorific value of the gas produced was 175 British thermal units per cubic foot. During the entire run the average electrical horsepower developed at the switchboard was 205. The amount of peat used per electrical horsepower per hour available for outside purposes, including the estimated quantity required for the generation of the steam used in the operation of the producer, was 3.16 pounds, while 2.69 pounds were required per brake horsepower hour at the gas engine, available for outside purposes. It should be stated that the peat bricks had been dried, and that the moisture content of those used averaged 21 per cent. The gas, as shown by the analysis, was rich in hydrogen and comparatively lowin nitrogen. Followingare the results of this test: Producer-gas test—Test 117; Florida No. 1. Duration Of-teSt CHGUIS ) 5:05 siegs:5b dies eisai chore tsisie Sic. d ess chose 2 Bia Seems es oaaaamen eahsedweaee ee Average electrical horsepower. ....-.......---2--.----- Average British thermal units per cubic foot of gas-.- Total-fuelfired: (Pounds) susie ocean eauuueskioeecdos Peat consumed in producer | Equivalent used by producer per horsepower hour. plant. Peat as Dry Combus-| Peat as Dry Combus- fired. peat. tible. fired. peat. tible. Per electrical horsepower: Pounds. | Pounds. | Pounds. | Pounds. | Pounds. ene Commercially available............... 2.98 2.35 2.20 3.16 2.50 2.33 Developed at switchboard............. 2.85 2.25 2.11 3.03 2.39 2.24 Per brake horsepower: Commercially available......--....... 2.53 2.00 1.87 2.69 2.12 1.98 Developed at engine ..............---. 2.43 1.92 1.79 2.57 2.08 1.90 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 155 ANALYSIS OF GAS By VOLUME. Garbo dioxtde\(C Os): .oc5casn 6 cc eek Bo. Sc aae-catank han Oanietin davon begin ernes Sebgensidi selene dale He Smeid eis Carbon monoxide (CO). .i..scc0 meconaaacdencced wenn cencoiiemnerg ere cmeheatad mangeneaee dag ca etiaisiece ERG cae cessor ern rapier ert ie asia aie tancdanaTaan Pe Kleen ale Araceli aia meee Methane (CH) --...-- Nitrogen (Ng)..-..---- Ethylene (C2H4)...-.-.---- 2 From these reports and from others of a similar nature, based upon much more extended trials in Europe, the ideal way in which to utilize peat for the generation of power would appear to be to convert it into gas in some of the types of gas producers that have been adapted to the purpose and to use this in properly designed gas engines. PEAT AS FUEL IN THE GAS PRODUCER. Wet, unprepared peat is difficult material to handle in a gas producer, first, because it contains so much water that the tempera- ture of a mass of it can with difficulty be raised high enough to generate a fuel gas without consuming more fuel than is warranted by the results, and, secondly, because the raw peat tends toform dense, impenetrable layers in the fuel bed of the producer, through which the gases generated can scarcely find their way. On these accounts the feasibility of trying to use raw peat in exist- ing types of gas producers, except in a purely experimental way, is doubtful. For elementary experiments, successful gas production will be much more probable if the peat is machined, formed into small bricks, thoroughly air dried, crushed into pieces with an average diameter of 1 inch, and then used in a down-draft or pressure gas producer, although a suction producer with centrifugal tar extractor might be successfully used. It does not seem to be essential to have the pieces of regular form, nor is it desirable to have them more than an inch or two in largest dimension. Experience shows that if the pieces are too large the gas passes through the fuel bed too rapidly for the carbon dioxide to be decomposed; but with usual forms of gas producers very unsatisfactory results will be obtained by using ‘the peat in a powdery condition. There seems little doubt that some of the heat of the off-going gas can be utilized for drying the peat, and also that peat with a higher percentage of water than the air-dry state may be successfully used in gas producers of the type in which an excess of steam under pres- sure is used, such as the Mond producers of the Power-Gas Corpora- tion (Ltd.), of Stockton-on-Tees, England. This company announces that peat containing 60 to 70 per cent water can be utilized by their process, and that there are three large installations already in operation, one in England, one in Italy, and one in Germany. The Mond gas producer has been modified by Frank & Caro, and by them it is claimed that peat with 40 to 60 per cent water may be used for fuel. 156 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. The use of the heat of the producer gas to partially dry the peat, although possible, must be carried on in such a way that the process is automatic and continuous, and that the water driven off does not accumulate in undesirable places. Many suggestions and designs of machinery for this purpose have been made, but the present European practice seems to be to adhere to the use of crushed air- dried machine peat. The gas from peat gasified in ordinary gas producers contains much tar which should be removed in a tower scrubber with a spray of water, or in some of the more reeently perfected types of scrubbers, because coke and other porous material used in ordinary scrubbers soon become saturated. The tar may all be decomposed, however, by using a down-draft producer, or as in the Koerting gas producer, by drawing the gases off at the top and conducting them by a special pipe to the zone of complete combustion, and thence up through the fuel bed. In such a producer the outlet for the producer gas is placed in the side of the producer at about the top of the incandescent layer. COST OF GAS-PRODUCER POWER PLANTS. For the following carefully prepared tables of cost of gas producers, producer-gas engines, and complete gas-producer power plants, the writer is indebted to R. H. Fernald, engineer of the Bureau of Mines, who had charge of the producer-gas investigations of the United States Geological Survey. The following table gives the approximate price of suction, pres- sure, and down-draft gas producers of from 20 to 2,000 horsepower. Approximate cost of suction, pressure, and down-draft gas producers of 20 to 2,000 horse- power. i j Cost of en- Foundation. i Cost per horsepower. . Horse- gineand | Cost of Total cost erected. } iliari i < | power. | auxiliaries | erection.| Gypic USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 157 The prices above are from quotations from various manufacturers, as is also true of the prices for the producer-gas engines below. It should be remembered that the cost of producer-gas engines is greater per rated power than the cost of engines of the same rating for natural or artificial gas. Cost of producer-gas engines of 20 to 2,000 horsepower. Foundation. Cost per horsepower. a Cost of en- é riche orse- | gine and ost of ‘otal cost power. | auxiliaries | erection. Cubic erected. : eaaae aenaee 9 feet. coer F.0.b. founda- | founda- | tion. tion. 33,750 64; 850 cone oe producer gas-engines per horsepower: Average, 300 pounds; maximum, 425 pounds; minimum pounds. Cost per horsepower of producer-gas installations. Cost of gas producer Cost of complete and engine. plant. Horse- power. Erected, Erected, excluding | including | Excluding | Including founda- founda- | buildings.c) buildings. tions. tions. 20 $105. 00 $ 108. 30 . 50 48 5,500 @ Includes producer, engine, electric generator, and auxiliaries, all erected with suitable foundations. 158 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. From the above it will be seen that the cost of a complete installa- tion, with gas producers and producer-gas engines, is still somewhat more per horsepower than with boilers and steam engines, but seem- ingly the differences are decreasing. On the other hand, the cost of operating and maintaining a producer-gas plant is considerably less than for the steam plant of the same capacity, because the efficiency of the fuel is greater in the former. Less fuel and the ability to use the cheapest grades reduce the fuel bills, and labor charges are lower because less firing is needed, so that operating expenses may be decreased about 50 per cent.? The chief matter of concern now is so to modify the types of gas producers used in this country that peat may be burned in them as successfully as in those used in Europe; the process of making pro- ducer gas is old and established, and engines for using the gas are already developed to a high state of efficiency and reliability. BY-PRODUCT GAS PRODUCERS. In Europe, where conservation and efficient utilization of natural resources have been practiced for many years, attention has been turned to the recovery of commercially valuable substances from the gases generated in gas producers and other apparatus for gasifying fuel without impairing the heat value of the gas, or of the other chief product of the distillation—for example, coke—if gas is not sought. Such secondary products are called by-products, and their recovery in charcoal, coke-making, or producer-gas plants may be of sufficient commercial importance to warrant the building of expensive equip- ment. The by-products obtained and obtainable depend upon the composition of the fuel distilled and the processes used to make the primary product, as well as upon the temperature at which gasification is carried on. In general, it may be said that only three systems of by-product gas producers have been tried in Europe, two of which are still experi- mental. The Mond by-product gas producer for using bituminous coal is the oldest of these. This is designed to recover as ammonium sulphate a maximum proportion of the combined nitrogen in the fuel used. Ammonium sulphate, which finds a ready market for agri- cultural use is recovered in the producer by using large quantities of steam to keep the fuel at the lowest temperature at which the fuel gases can be given off. The ammonia was formerly made to unite with sulphuric acid in a special scrubbing tower, through which the gases from the gas producers were drawn by exhaust fans. The sul- phuric acid towers have been entirely eliminated in the latest form of plant for recovering ammonia from Mond gas producers. The gas on Bull. 9, Bureau of Mines, p. 457. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 159 leaving the producer is cooled somewhat by passing through a tubular regenerator into a rectangular washing chamber. There it is washed with water in the form of a fine spray and freed from dust and part of the contained tar. The cleansed, gas then flows through an appa- ratus in which the ammonia in the gas combines with sulphuric acid to form ammonium sulphate; this, in dilute solution, is withdrawn periodically. This form of gas producer is said to be successful for large plants, and is in operation in many places in England and in one (Wyandotte, Mich.) in the United States. The other two by-product gas producers are the Ziegler and the Frank-Caro, both designed for using peat. The Ziegler gas producer recovers other substances besides ammonium sulphate, whereas the Frank-Caro gas producer is reported to be an adaptation of the principle of the Mond gas producer for using peat with a relatively high percentage of water, 40 to 60 per cent being allowable. In the case of the Mond gas producer, large installations, at least 2,000 horsepower, are required to make economically possible the operation of the special peat gas producers for the recovery of am- monia, and plants developing 1,000 horsepower or more are men- tioned as necessary to make the Frank-Caro process of ammonia recovery a commercial success. Therefore it seems probable that, as at present understood, the peat gas producer for ordinary power plants does not yield enough salable by-products to make their re- covery in a special plant feasible, although the peat may run high in combined nitrogen. But small gas producers for using peat fuel are entirely practicable if no attempt is made to recover by-products from the gas. PEAT REQUIRED FOR PRODUCING A UNIT OF POWER IN THE GAS PRODUCER. The available records of experiments with peat in gas producers and of authentic statements of commercial operations show that it requires from 2 to 3 pounds of dry peat to develop an electrical horse- power per hour, the exact quantity being dependent, among other things, upon the type of gas producer, the efficiency of the producer- gas engine, and the quality and amount of moisture and ash in the peat used. In one test run, the details of which are not available for publica- tion, the peat as put into the gas producer contained 27.8 per cent ash and 13.9 per cent moisture, yet only 4.11 pounds were consumed per hour for each commercially available electrical horsepower, or 3.5 pounds estimated as dry fuel. Stated in another way, 2 tons of air- dried machine peat of a grade too high in ash to be considered within the limits of ordinary commercial use for boiler fuel would run a 661°—Bull. 16—11—11 160 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 100-horsepower plant for one 10-hour day, if the gas produced were used in a gas engine designed for this kind of gas. It may be said that the experiment cited was conducted under rigid test conditions, and although, because of probable and uncertain impoverishment of the gas through leakage, the details of the run can not be published, the figures quoted may be taken as the maximum for this type of producer and fuel. UTILIZATION OF PRODUCER GAS FROM PEAT. Mention has been made of the use in European countries of pro- ducer gas as a fuel in certain industries. The energy of the peat may be economically and satisfactorily utilized as gas by using the proper forms of burners for firing * steam boilers, ceramic kilns (brick, tile pottery, etc.), lime and cement kilns, metallurgical furnaces (forges, foundries, steel and ore roasters), and muffle and glass furnaces. Peat fuel properly prepared is especially valuable for metallurgical work of all sorts, because it contains less sulphur than coal or coke. The same may be said of the gas derived from peat. However, beds of peat that have been subjected to the action of salt or brackish water, or to certain kinds of spring water, are exceptions to the general rule. These may have as much sulphur as many kinds of coal, and at least a part of the sulphur will appear in producer gas generated from such peat. Gas producers for fuel gas are usually of the pressure type. The special use for which the gas is required should determine the form of the producer and the kind of scrubbing apparatus employed. The form of the producer and the scrubber must also be adapted to meet the peculiarities of peat if this substance is to be used for making fuel gas. In some cases where producer gas is required as fuel, no cleansing would be required, but the gas would be conducted directly from the producer to the burners. The form of the furnaces or kilns in which the use of peat gas is proposed and the manner of firing them will have to be adapted to the requirements of the product and of a gaseous fuel. Moreover, workmen must be trained specially in order to get the best practical results. In general, it may be said that the attempt to develop plants for utilizing gas for fuel should be left to trained experts in gas engineer- ing and to concerns with large capital, as much well-planned and carefully conducted experimental work will usually be needed before anything like the theoretical efficiency is obtained in actual practice from such processes and the plants using them. It should be said, however, that all or nearly all of the uses suggested as possible for producer gas as fuel have been tried on a commercial scale, and are a Wyer, S. E., Producer gas and gas producers, 1907, p. 210. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 161 embodied in plants now in operation in the United States or Europe. There seems to be no doubt, also, in view of the facts already stated, that a good quality of producer gas can be cheaply made from peat for any of these purposes, if properly designed and well-constructed gas producers are used at a place where a supply of peat is available. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ON PEAT FUEL. FUEL VALUE. The fuel value of peat as compared with that of coal and wood for firing boilers, furnaces, and stoves has already been discussed at length (pp. 52-64). The facts presented would seem to demonstrate that although plainly inferior to the best coal in the number of heat units yielded per pound consumed, nevertheless, if prepared in the ways commonly used in Europe peat fuel presents so many desirable qualities, such as freedom from smoke, cleanliness in handling, small ash content, complete and easily controlled combustion, and pros- pective low price, that there should be a good field for its introduction for manufacturing and domestic uses in those parts of the United States where peat naturally occurs in abundance. UTILIZATION OF DEPOSITS. There are many small bogs in the peat-bearing regions of the country which, although too small to warrant the establishment of large plants for the production of fuel, could be utilized to furnish machine peat enough for boiler fuel for a single small factory for many years. They might also furnish the power to pump water and gen- erate electricity for a small community for an equal length of time. The principal matter to be borne in mind in preparing to exploit a peat deposit in such a way is that the simplest equipment which has proved it can yield the desired quantity of usable or salable fuel is the one most likely to give satisfactory returns either in fuel or money. Every added process of treatment beyond that which is necessary to put the peat into usable form for a specific purpose adds many times to the first cost of equipment and to the practical difficulties of mak- ing a product that can be sold for enough to pay the costs of prepa- ration and of putting it on the market at a profit. PRODUCER-GAS PLANTS. The present state of knowledge seems strongly to indicate that large peat deposits can be most profitably utilized, and the largest percentage of the stored-up energy in them recovered as power, by converting the peat into producer gas and using this gas in properly 162 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. designed gas engines. The power may be used by factories oper- ated on the spot, or as electric. energy may be used at a distance. Large plants, by using by-product gas producers and thus at least recovering as ammonium sulphate the ammonia that is formed dur- ing the destructive distillation of the peat, may be able from sales of the sulphate to pay a part of the expenses of the whole operation The by-products process, however, may not be feasible for gas- producer plants of small size, because the costs of installation, main- tenance, and supervision are proportionately higher for small than for large plants, and the quantity of by-products obtainable from a small gas producer is not sufficient to keep a recovery plant in oper- ation continuously. Even without any by-products the use of producer gas presents so many advantages that wherever peat beds are to be used as sources of fuel for power installations of more than 100 horsepower, the possibilities of a producer-gas plant should be given serious con- sideration. The producer-gas plant may also be readily adapted to metallurgi- cal work, to firing kilns for brick, porcelain, lime, and probably for cement manufacturing. It might have a large use in roasting ores and, in a smaller way, in foundries and other iron-working plants, and in reheating and refining steel, copper, and other metals when fuel free from sulphur is required. Even for boiler plants that could use peat fuel, a gas producer would be a most desirable adjunct, as it would permit the use of peat less care- fully prepared and containing more water, and the economy would be greater than in any other way of firing. PEAT POWDER. Next to producer gas, peat powder is the most attractive form of fuel for firing boiler furnaces, for operating kilns of various sorts, and for the metallurgical operations mentioned. This form of peat fuel has not yet been so generally used in Europe as has producer gas, and not as much has been demonstrated commercially in regard to its value. The most recent reports are very favorable and indicate that peat powder can be cheaply produced and is as good fuel for boiler firing when properly prepared and fired as the same weight of good English coal. DOMESTIC USES. The steadiest and, in the aggregate, the greatest demand for peat fuel may be expected to come from small consumers who want a clean, easily handled, and cheap fuel that gives out a steady heat and yet responds quickly to changes of draft when burned in ordinary USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 163 heating and cooking stoves. Doubtless in this way, as a supple- mentary and auxiliary fuel, much of the peat that is gathered for fuel will be used. PEAT COKE. Peat coke is the most efficient solid fuel derived from peat, but its high cost of preparation will doubtless limit its use even more than that of charcoal is now limited. Its value for all uses to which char- coal is now put should find it a ready and satisfactory market after it has once become known to the industries that require such a product. PEAT AS A RAW MATERIAL FOR PRODUCTS OTHER THAN FUEL. For many years the peat beds of Europe have been studied to see if the great quantities of partly decomposed, fibrous plant remains that are found in them, and that can be recovered seemingly at low cost, could not be made into articles of commercial value which would replace*those now made from more expensive materials. It must be borne in mind, however, that most kinds of vegetable raw materials are scarce in the countries of northern Europe where this experimental work has been carried on, and command a much higher price there than can be obtained for similar materials in the United States. There is, therefore, a much greater incentive to find substitutes or adulterants there than in this country, where potentially valuable vegetable substances are extravagantly used or allowed to go to waste. Material better than peat for some of the uses that have been proposed for it in Europe is at the present time wasted lavishly in some parts of the United States where peat is found, or in nearby territory. CHEMICAL PRODUCTS. In discussing the manufacture of peat coke and peat gas in pre- ceding sections, the possibility of obtaining a variety of chemical substances of commercial value was brought out. These materials are actually made on a commercial scale in Europe as by-products of peat-coke plants by condensing and redistilling the heavier gaseous products of distillation. In this country the same compounds are obtained as by-products of making charcoal, and to a rapidly increas- ing extent some of them are recovered from coal-coking plants and illuminating-gas and power-gas producers. The recovery of chemical by-products from the destructive distilla- tion of any fuel requires a carefully planned recovery plant, so designed and arranged that it will handle automatically, at the least possible expense, large volumes of liquids, containing a small percentage of salable material; to do this the greatest possible economy of heat and power must be effected. In addition, the cost of supervision and of skilled labor necessary for such recovery plants is considerably greater than for plants making less compli- cated products. For these reasons the manufacture of acetic acid 164 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 165 and acetates, wood alcohol, formaldehyde, ammonia and its com- pounds, phenol and creosote compounds, and the products which can be derived from the tarry residues from peat distillation, such as illuminating and heavy oils, paraffin wax and asphaltum, can be profitably undertaken only at large plants, well designed and constructed, sufficiently capitalized, and properly managed. It is significant that several plants erected in connection with large lumbering operations, for utilizing waste wood, by distilling the lighter compounds mentioned above, have not been successful. The reasons for failure have not been that the products were not in demand at good prices, or that there was any inherent difficulty in any of the processes, but that so far as could be learned, the margin of profit was so small, and the expenses of maintenance so great, that the owners preferred to close the plants and waste the materials which they attempted to save or to convert them to other uses. There seems to be no question whatever, from the reports pub- lished, that all of the chemical compounds which have been men- tioned can be profitably made from peat, and that there is a market for many of them in large and increasing quantities, but it seems assured, also, that they can be made with profit only in large and costly plants in which charcoal or coke is obtained from the peat as the principal product, or in those in which large quantities of peat are gasified to generate fuel or power gas. ALCOHOL. Within a few years there has been a revival of interest in a process by which ethyl or ‘‘grain’”’ alcohol can be obtained from peat. It has long been known that cellulose could be broken down into sugar by proper chemical treatment, and that the sugar could be converted into alcohol by fermentation induced by yeasts, as in the ordinary production of alcohol from cereals and fruits. The revival of this process was reported from Denmark, Sweden, and France, where experimental factories were established to test a newly discovered yeast, and from them came the reports that alcohol could be made from the coarser and less decomposed types of peat, at a total cost of between 45 and 50 cents per gallon. Later accounts state that the Danish plant has closed indefinitely without commercial operation. The process of making alcohol from peat, therefore, is still in an experimental stage. It may never reach the point where it will be used in this country, as in many communities apples and other fruits rich in sugar and sugary waste of various kinds are allowed to decay in large quantities when, for a smaller cost than peat can be used, they might be converted into alcohol for fuel uses. 166 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. AMMONIUM COMPOUNDS. THE FRANK-CARO PROCESS. “ The process of Frank and Caro for obtaining ammonium sulphate as a by-product incidental to the development of producer gas from peat has been mentioned in the discussion of producer gas. From 70 to 85 per cent of the combined nitrogen of the peat, often amount- ing to more than 2 per cent of its dry weight, is recovered by this process. The peat, which may contain from 40 to 60 per cent of water, is superheated with an excess of steam in the drying zone of a Mond gas-producer, decomposing the nitrogenous compounds and convert- ing part or all of them into ammonia. The steam and gases from the producer are conducted through pipes to washers and ammonia- fixing apparatus, where the free ammonia in the gas is brought into intimate contact with sulphuric acid and converted into ammonium sulphate. The dilute solution is periodically drawn off at the bottom and concentrated by evaporation. It may be filtered and purified by crystallization. This process is reported by Caro® to be in use. at Sodingen, Germany, and at the large peat electric power station of the Hanover Colonization and Moor Improvement Co., at Schweger Moor, in northwestern Germany. Ammonium sulphate has a rapidly increasing demand because of its high value as a constituent of the best types of fertilizers, and the cost of equipping a plant of sufficient size to profitably manufacture it from peat on a commercial scale is the chief factor to be considered by those contemplating its production. THE WOLTERECK PROCESS. By the Woltereck process, which is the discovery of Dr. H. Wolter- eck, of London, England, the discoverer claims to get a part of the nitrogen for the ammonia directly from the air and only a part from the peat. This claim is backed by the reports of a long series of carefully conducted laboratory and large-scale experiments, which have been worked out seemingly with great scientific accuracy and attention to detail. The assertion is made that when wet peat is burned in a specially constructed furnace at a temperature barely sufficient to keep the fire alive, some of the nitrogen of the moist air, constantly forced into the combustion zone of the furnace, forms ammonia by uniting with the hydrogen of the organic matter that is being decomposed. The gas from this wet combustion contains tar, tar water, and other distillates from the peat, besides the ammonia. In a large plant now in process of development in Ireland these a See also section on by-product gas producers, pp. 158-159. > Caro, N. Chem, Zeit. 35: 56: 506-7, 1911. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 167 gases are conveyed from the furnace to a scrubber that removes the tars without condensing the water, as this water would contain a part of the ammonia. From the tar scrubber the hot gases are sent to an alkali tower, where a hot solution of soda or milk of lime removes the acetic acid, as sodium or calcium acetates. The acid may be recovered by later treatment. The gas next passes to similar towers in which it is met by a fine spray of hot, dilute sul- phuric acid, which combines with the ammonia to form ammonium sulphate, the chief object of the process. The acid is used until nearly or quite neutralized, when the solution of ammonium sulphate is drawn off to crystallizing vats, concentrated by evaporation, and purified by crystallization. The process gives no fuel gas, as the temperature at which the peat is burned, 750° to 950° F. (400° to 500° C.) is too low to permit the formation of carbon monoxide or hydrogen. The process is consequently one purely of chemical manufacture, based on the formation of ammonia from the nitrogen of the air and of the peat itself, by the slow combustion of wet peat, the statement being made that peat with 75 per cent of water can be successfully used in this way. The plant for manufacturing ammonium sulphate by this process must be of large size to be profitable, because, as in other chemical industries, the cost of production increases disproportionately as the output is decreased. The inventor of the process estimates a mini- mum production of 5 tons of ammonium sulphate from 100 tons of theoretically dry peat. The plant now being erected in Ireland, it is estimated, will manufacture at least 5,000 tons of ammonium sul- phate per year when in operation, besides acetic acid, paraffin, and other chemical products of secondary importance. The cost of constructing the plant now being built will be approximately £100,000 ($500,000). If, however, the discovery is as stated, this investment is justified by the needs of the agricultural interests of the world, which are making constantly increasing demands for more sources of combined nitrogen suitable for fertilizing purposes. NITRATES. Peat has also been proposed as a means for the intensive production of nitrates on the following principle pointed out by Muntz and Laine. A culture bed of peat, watered with a dilute (0.75 per cent) solution of ammonium sulphate, then inoculated with nitrifying organisms and kept at a temperature of 38° C., yields, after a time, nitrates to the amount of 0.82 per cent. By repeating the application of ammonium sulphate five times, the quantity of nitrates developed amounts to more than 4 per cent. This may be washed from the bed and purified. The peat may then be used for fuel or for distilla- 168 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. tion. Whether this process is adapted to the commercial production of nitrates on a large scale is not yet demonstrated, but in view of the rare occurrence and limited supplies of these salts, so vitally important in agriculture, it presents possibilities of great importance if the facts relative to nitrogen fixation are as stated. The fact that all of the world’s supply of grain alcohol is obtained by the action of microorganisms on sugar solutions, often of considerable dilution, points strongly to the conclusion that no great difficulty would be met in applying to commercial operations the principle stated by the authors quoted. If, however, the only change effected is to convert to a nitrate the nitrogen compound supplied to the peat from ammonia, the value of the process is questionable. DYE STUFFS. The well-known brown color of water flowing from peat deposits may be greatly increased in strength by adding alkaline substances to wet peat, as they dissolve some of the organic acid compounds. The resulting brown compounds can be again precipitated as insoluble substances that are said to give a permanent brown color and that could probably be utilized as dyes. The color can also be obtained in the form of a brown powder by adding an excess of acid to the alkaline solution first obtained and filtering. MATERIALS FOR TANNING. Tanning materials have been obtained in Europe from peat. It has long been known that peat, especially those types in which woody plants were abundant, contains tannic acid, tannin, and related sub- stances in considerable quantity. The process of preparing the tanning material is thus described by Ryan: The powdered peat is treated with nitric acid in cemented cisterns until a small part of the product ceases to give brown fumes when boiled with an excess of nitric acid. The mash is then diluted with water and heated by a current of steam for several hours. A solution of stannous chloride is added, and the boiling is prolonged until the dark color of the solution has changed to a light brown, when the liquid is decanted from the precipitate and can be used directly for tanning hides. Other chemical products that can be obtained are discussed in the sections of this bulletin relating to peat coke. PAPER. Peat containing much fibrous matter has been manufactured into paper, chiefly in a single factory established for the purpose at Capac, Mich. The machinery was invented in Europe, but has been brought to perfection in this plant, which was reported by the owners to be the only one in the world at the time it was erected. < Ryan, H., Reports upon the Irish peat industries, p. 415. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 169 The product thus far manufactured is cardboard of a dark color but good quality, suitable for making boxes and for similar purposes. The raw material can be bleached, but seemingly the coloring matter of the peat is so durable as to render bleaching too expensive for commercial purposes. In 1910 a small plant for making coarse brown paper from peat mixed with wood pulp and other paper stock was erected near Garrett, Ind. The product finds ready sale. The chief objections to using peat as paper stock can be briefly stated as follows: There is much waste material, including water and mineral matter, which must be handled before it can be eliminated; peat is usually uneven in structure and texture; the fibrous matter is small in quantity, was originally poor in texture, and has been weak- ened by decay. Hence the peat fiber often has to be enriched with wood pulp or other paper stock to produce even poor grades of paper. The fiber is also difficult to bleach, so that only coarse brown papers and cardboard can be manuafctured. Most types of peat contain very little fiber and are too thoroughly decayed for use as paper stock, and it is probable that less than 10 per cent of the peat deposits of the United States are suitable for paper making. Probably the only kind of bog that may be considered suitable for this purpose is one which has been built up from the bottom by suc- cessive layers of grasslike plants to a considerable depth and over a large area. Poorly decomposed moss peat, by the addition of a small peréentage of paper stock, might be used for making some grades of paper. The bogs with a 3 or 4 foot stratum of mossy, fibrous, or woody peat at the top and structureless material below would be of small value for paper making, nor would those of small area, be available, since the cost of equipping a paper mill is large. Paper and pasteboard made from mixtures of varying quantities of peat fiber and wood pulp have been produced from time to time in several countries of Europe, where a considerable number of proc- esses have been patented, but generally the manufacture has not been continued beyond the experimental stages because of the high costs of reducing the peat fiber to a condition suitable for use. WOVEN FABRICS. The stronger fibers from the more fibrous kinds of peat may be separated and cleansed from the surrounding material, and after treatment which renders them pliable they may be woven into fabrics. The most successful experimental use for this kind of cloth has been as blankets for horses and other live stock. It has been reported recently from Europe, also, that the fiber obtained from the remains of the sedges that frequently grow in moss bogs is collected by hand as the peat is run through disinte- 170 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. grating machinery, and is used for adulterating silk threads and fabrics, for which purpose it is in growing demand. After the mate- rial is sorted, or in the case of purer fibrous peat without such sorting, the entire mass is beaten up with water, after which the fibers are gathered by means of forks moved by an endless chain. The fibers are removed by the conveyor to large vats, in which they are washed with water, again collected, party dried, placed in hot acid solution, washed, and allowed to ferment, and then dried. The dust which still adheres to the fibers is next removed by proper screening, and the cleansed fibers are prepared for spinning. The cost of this mate- rial is about the same as that of hemp and flax, about twice that of jute, and only a little less than that of cotton, even in Germany, where it is produced. ARTIFICIAL WOOD. A material called ‘‘ Heloxyl,” closely resembling heavy paper, was made by compressing fibrous types of peat and hardening the resulting material by special treatment into sheets, blocks, and other forms for structural purposes. The material was light, compact, waterproof, and nonconductive of sound, vibrations, and heat, and could be made fireproof by the introduction of mineral matter; it was also readily glued, nailed, and painted, and because of these properties, as well as its strength and lightness, made good finishing material. Artificial wood, made by mixing fibrous peat with certain mineral cements and compressing it, has also been made in a small way in Germany. The material can be molded into any desired form, is noncombustible or slow burning, does not absorb water, and is so tough and hard that it is said to make good and durable paving blocks and flooring, as well as a desirable substitute for wood in most of its ordinary uses. MATTRESSES AND SANITARY APPLIANCES. Moss peat and material which has been selected and cleansed of sticks and other coarse matter, or the roughly cleaned fibers derived from peat, may be made into mattresses and dressing for wounds. The absorbent, deodorizing, and antiseptic properties of peat hake it good material for these uses. The mattresses are said to be especially valuable for hospital use, since they are light in weight, resilient, soft, inodorous, and very cheap, so that they can be renewed at small cost. The material used for dressing wounds needs more thorough prepa- ration than that intended for mattresses, as it must be freed from all dirt and woody matter, and, on the whole, there is doubt whether it possesses sufficient superiority to substances now in general use for USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 171 the same purpose to warrant trying to introduce it. In the form of fine powder it has been used with excellent results in dressing cuts, burns, and other wounds, and its many good features for such use merit investigation by American surgeons. MOSS LITTER AND MULL. A much more general use for the more fibrous kinds of peat in Europe is for bedding for stock, and in the form of powder or mull for various packing, absorbent, and deodorizing uses. Moss or peat litter is hardly to be classed as a manufactured prod- uct, since the common processes of manufacture consist chiefly of cutting the peat into large blocks, spreading them on the bog to dry, gathering the peat blocks in a partly dried condition, and tearing these up by the use of simple machinery. The shredded material is passed through rotary screens to separate the finer material, or mull, then dried artificially and packed in bales. This material is capable of absorbing much larger amounts of moisture in proportion to its weight than any other substance in general use for stock bedding. It is a good deodorizer, and almost entirely prevents the decompo- sition of the nitrogenous and other organic substances for a consid- erable time. In addition, it is reported to be springy and durable and to keep the feet of the animals which stand on it in perfectly healthy condition. At the present time a considerable quantity of this sort of litter is imported from Holland and other countries of northern and western Europe; in 1909 it amounted to something over 9,000 tons. It has been made for several years past at a single plant at Garrett, Ind., and the demand for the product of this establishment is rapidly increasing. Many of the peat bogs of the northern United States are favorably situated for manufacturing this material, and the peat is admirably adapted for the use, judging from the imported product that has been examined by the writer. This substance is chiefly composed of poorly decomposed sphagnum moss and other herbaceous plants, and is of a light-brown color when dry. COST OF A PLANT. The cost of equipping and establishing a plant for making moss litter is not large when compared with that of the more complicated fuel-making plants, because the machinery is inexpensive and of considerably lighter construction. For larger plants some form of efficient artificial drier should be provided to complete the drying of the peat after it has dried as much as is possible on the surface of the bog. Todry the peat below 15 or 18 per cent of moisture before 172 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. baling, however, will be entirely unnecessary, as when dried below this water content the peat will rapidly take up moisture until it contains as much as it can absorb from the air—from 10 to 20 per cent, according to the relative humidity of the air in the locality. Following is a statement of the cost of a moderate-sized plant equipped with European machinery, but without drier or boiler and engine: Cost of machinery for a peat moss litter and mull factory producing from 1 to 2 tons per hour. Net cost, Description of machinery. Weight. io York. Disintegrator, consisting of double driving, 2 driving wheels, 2 pulleys, 2 rollers with | Pounds. exchangeable tappet rings of steel, mounted on iron scaffold. are : ee 4,000 $1,000 Chain elevator, consisting of a forged bucket chain, upper driving, guiding stations, and, lower expansion: § CAM <2: e:ujciererarsoraicis/sinis raisin natorarcisinrarsrnisiatnioardticare soareteteraiasa svaraerotalata cs 2,000 675 Rotating sieve for sifting off the litter and at the same time producing mull......_.. 1,500 500 Latest bale press of bar or rack and pinion jack, for any size of bale; driving coupled with machine, including an automatic brake, 2 pulleys, and self-acting starter... . 10,000 2,500 ee lete transmission for above, including all pulleys, bearings, lubricators, and — aaa ONS io gaat iain iapc asap Slee sais mien ala aie Se aye late Seie minieiaserpisisciearsisinlerseemisinels The required foundation pins, bolts, and fastening screws.............ssssscceeeeeee ”650 "195 lmeemeacise 6,000 a For a full description of peat-litter tiene see Nystrom, E., Peat and lignite; their manufacture and use in Europe: Canada Department of Mines, Mines Branch, 1908, p. 231. MARKETING AND USE. The litter, after preparation, is shipped in highly compressed burlap-covered bales, and brings a good price in the markets—gen- erally a much better one than could be obtained as the result of the same expenditure of time in preparing the same weight of peat for fuel. Peat litter should not only have a large use in city stables, but ought to be used in dairy barns, where its absorbent, deodorizing, and disinfecting properties would make it much more valuable than any material now commonly used for the purpose. The mull, consisting of the finer parts of the peat screened out from the litter, is much used in those European countries where it is pro- duced as an absorbent and cheap deodorizer. It is very satisfactory for use as a substitute for more expensive chemical substances or mixed with them for outhouses, earth closets, cesspools, etc., in places where comprehensive sewer systems have not been constructed. On the whole, these products, simple as they are, and requiring no large outlay of capital, present the greatest possibilities for paying investment to owners of peat deposits of suitable character, because they are easily and cheaply made, are already on the market, and are favorably known to many dealers and consumers. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 173 PACKING MATERIAL. Peat prepared in about the same way as the moss litter is largely used in Europe for packing fragile and perishable articles, and there seems no reason why it can not be used for the same purposes in this country, where much more expensive substances are now employed. This use should be extended to include the packing of eggs, fish, meats, and fruits, as is done in Europe, for cold storage. The anti- septic power of the peat adds to its value for this purpose. An exhaustive series of carefully planned experiments with the proposed packing material in various forms and with varying water content under American conditions is needed before any considerable invest- ment for producing it on a commercial scale in the United States can be recommended. Peat moss (Sphagnum) is gathered and baled in considerable quantities in New Jersey, and to a less extent in New York, for packing and for florists’ use. FERTILIZER FILLER. The most extensive and successful use of peat as the base of a com- mercial product sold in large quantities on the open market in this country is as ‘‘filler” in artificial or chemical fertilizers. This filler should not be regarded, however, as a harmful adulterant, but rather as a diluent, or in some cases as a necessary constituent of the mix- ture into which it is introduced, since it improves the whole, both mechanically and chemically; for the same purpose manufacturers use powdered graphite, coal dust, cinders, and ashes, sand, etc. The use of peat powder as filler also permits the use of many kinds of waste animal matter, rich in valuable nitrogenous compounds, which could not be used otherwise because they absorb water from the air and cake, or give off offensive odors, and soon decay, their valuable nitrogenous contents being dissipated as gases. On the other hand, the peat adds to the total nitrogen of the com- pleted fertilizer, so that an analysis shows a certain proportion of nitro- gen, which is said by chemists not to be immediately available for plants, and as nitrogen is the most costly constituent of all fertilizers, this addition is objected to by some agricultural chemists. Recent experiments seem to show, however, that at least one-third of the nitrogen in even poorly decomposed peat is really immediately avail- able for plants, hence part, at least, of the objections to this use of peat fall. The advocates of its use claim that it improves the mechanical texture and the odor of the mixtures in which it is used, and prevents the loss of nitrogen by checking the decomposition of its organic compounds and by absorbing any free ammonia developed; it also adds to the soil an amount of organic matter equivalent to the 174 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. quantity of the peat used, the decomposition of which gives plant food and increases water-holding capacity. The black, well-decom- posed kinds of peat from thoroughly drained bogs are most often used for this purpose; such soils often show great and lasting fertility, producing good crops year after year with little fertilization, thus showing that they have an abundance of plant food. The processes of preparing peat filler are even simpler than those for peat litter. The peat is dug or plowed up and allowed to drain and become as nearly air-dry as may be, after which it is dried artifi- cially, often in a rotary drier, to a low moisture content, ground into a powder, and shipped in bags or in bulk. The grinding may be done before the artificial drying. The blacker, more highly decom- posed peats are most sought for this use because they generally con- tain a larger percentage of nitrogen than others. To be well equipped for the production of peat fertilizer filler a plant should require as little manual labor as possible. The equipment should include machine diggers, cars, and portable tracks for trans- porting the peat to the stock piles or storage sheds, and mechanical conveyers for transferring the crude, partly dry peat from storage to the driers. The commercial success of the entire operation may depend on the completeness of the mechanical arrangements connected with the drying plant. These, in such a plant, take the peat to the driers, receive it after drying, and remove it automatically to storage rooms or to cars for shipment. Because of the varying conditions of drainage at the different plants producing peat filler, different methods of digging the peat and of treating it before artificial drying are used. At some plants hand labor is used exclusively to dig the peat from drained or partly drained deposits and to place it on tramcars by which it is removed imme- diately to stock piles. At other plants operating on wet or undrained deposits the peat is dug by dredges floated in canals of their own excavation. As fast as the peat is dug it is either piled on the bog to drain, or on cars running on portable tracks along the bank of the canal, or on scows which are floated on the canal to the drying grounds or the factory for unloading. On thoroughly drained bogs that are dry enough to permit culti- vation the peat is sometimes plowed and harrowed before the upper layers are scraped up. Such treatment reduces the peat to powder and hastens drying materially. Every pound of water removed by evaporation induced by the wind and the heat of the sun reduces the amount of fuel needed in artificial drying. It is, therefore, where pos- sible, a distinct advantage to treat the peat as described. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 175 A modification of the method of cultivation just described is in use at some peat-filler factories. The digging, spreading, and gather- ing machinery described in an earlier section (p. 113) is used to pre- pare and gather peat powder with less than 40 per cent of moisture from the drying fields a few hours after digging—a great advantage, as may be seen by reference to the table showing the relations of the weights and percentages of the water contained in peat (p. 110). It is doubtful whether peat containing more than 50 per cent water can be dried with profit by artificial heat in the form of drier gener- ally used, considering the prices generally received for the product. A fully equipped plant for making peat into fertilizer filler prob- ably costs more than a plant for making machine peat, but because of the established market a good product of sufficient weight and of high nitrogen content commands a ready sale at considerably higher prices than the peat would bring as fuel in the form of machine peat. Peat fertilizer-filler plants were operated in 1910 in Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. PEAT AS A FERTILIZER. Experiment has seemingly demonstrated that powdered black peat that is somewhat alkaline in its reactions may, if properly prepared, be used with much benefit as a fertilizer on soils lacking in organic matter. Such material has been put on the market as a lawn dressing, and is finding a ready sale. Peat for this use should have a high nitrogen content, and the organic matter should be in such form that plants can get it readily. Fibrous and brown peat have little, if any, value for this purpose, and should not be used where immediate results are expected. The experimental work which has been done on the fertilizing value of peat has been too limited to warrant final conclusions, but the experience of farmers for many generations seems to justify the use of peat as a fertilizer. CONCLUSIONS. Peat is available for any of the uses cited in this discussion and for some others which have not been considered here, but it can hardly be classed as a satisfactory raw material for making any of the more complicated products under the usual conditions existing in the United States, where other and established substances are already to be had in any desired quantity and at satisfactory prices. More- over, these products are obtained from peat only by large investment of capital, and in most cases can not be manufactured before the plant has passed through a long experimental period, which must be properly provided for by a considerable reserve fund. 661°—Bull. 16—11——12 176 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. The simpler products, peat litter, mull, mattresses, packing material, and peat-fertilizer filler, have a much greater chance of being quickly made profitable, because some of them are already on the market and present uses for which the peat is especially adapted. Moreover, the processes of preparation are simple, and the cost of equipment for their manufacture with tried machinery is so low that moderate expenditure will fully equip a plant for their manufacture, and a long experimental development is unnecessary. It is apparent, therefore, that the more fibrous kinds of peat, where they are abundant in the United States, may be put to a number of profitable uses besides making them into fuel, while the black, plastic types have other possibilities, although they are not adapted to the same uses for which the first-mentioned type may be recommended. AGRICULTURAL USES OF PEAT. The utilization of peat in agricultural operations is a topic of impor- tance to the farmers of the regions of the United States where peat deposits are common, especially where reclamation by drainage is being undertaken, and this is beginning to be realized by those who are working on the problems involved in increasing the rate of yield and the diversity of farming operations. The subject of the proper value of peat and peat lands to agriculture is so important and . so complicated that it can be fully discussed only after a great number of practical experiments on a large scale have been made to deter- mine the availability of this sort of land for various kinds of crops under the wide range of temperature, of rainfall, and of types of peat that exists in the United States. In Europe, partly because of the large areas of unproductive peat land in the agricultural countries, and partly because of the crowded condition of these countries, the qualities of peaty soils have been made for many years the subject of exhaustive and careful study by trained specialists. These generally work under the auspices of a society made up of farmers, landholders, and others who are interested, and aided by definite appropriations of funds by the Government. The Govern- ment further aids in this important work by establishing and main- taining experiment stations at peat bogs, where the necessary experi- ments as to culture, drainage, and other phases of the problem are systematically carried out on such a scale that their practicability as well as their desirability may be determined. Government aid and supervision is given to plans for the colonization and develop- ment of large areas of marsh lands and in Germany a number of such colonies are now established. No work of this sort has yet been attempted in the United States except at a few of the State agricultural experiment stations, where investigations of the value of peat as a fertilizer and as a soil for certain crops are now being carried on. PEAT SOILS. In its natural condition peat is too wet to be worked, and before any crop plant can be made to grow upon it the surface must be cleared and the water level lowered by effective ditching and draining. In 177 178 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. general, after this has been accomplished, the surface layers of the peat are coarse in texture and often full of partly decayed stumps, roots, and other woody débris, which must be removed. The coarse-textured peat dries out readily and affords only a small amount of plant food, so that after a short time, or during unfavorable seasons, crops fail. Often swamps are cleared, drained, and cultivated for a brief period at considerable expense and then abandoned because they are, as a rule, unproductive. Aside from the coarseness of peat soils and their consequent poverty of moisture and plant food, an important cause of crop failure seems to be the attempt to grow crops not adapted to the soils. Extended observation in various parts of the country where peat soils are common seems to indicate that after one or two crops have been taken from newly cleared peat land of the common kind, grass is most likely to yield good crops for a number of years until the surface layers are blackened and disintegrated into a fine-grained, homo- geneous mass. After this has been accomplished, various kinds of crops may be raised, but these, as a rule, should be such as can well endure cold nights and early frosts, and are not greatly injured by drought. Various truck crops, such as onions, lettuce, celery, cab- bage, and other vegetables, seem to thrive on well-blackened peat and often yield very large returns. Peat soils generally need mineral fertilizers, especially potash, because they contain little available mineral matter, and barnyard manure is often very effective in adding to their productiveness, both because it adds to the peat material which the latter lacks and because, seemingly, it promotes the decomposition of the peat by introducing the fungi and bacteria which cause decay and hasten humus formation. In some parts of the country peat soils are among the most pro- ductive of any, yielding large crops year after year with no more care than is required to obtain inferior crops from other kinds of soils. In such places, however, the peat is of the thoroughly decomposed, black type, generally known as ‘‘muck”’; the brown, fibrous kinds are seldom very fertile until they have been cultivated or exposed to weathering agents for some years. FERTILIZER. Muck. or peat, has long been used by farmers as an auxiliary fertilizing material, either directly applied to the land or applied in connection with other fertilizers, especially in composts with barn- yard or stable manure. This practice is justified by the composition of peat, some kinds of which contain from 2 to 8 per cent of combined nitrogen, besides other organic matter, and when properly applied increase the humus in the soil and hence the water-holding power. USES OF PEAT FOR FURL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 179 To get the best results from peat for these purposes it should be dug and left on the bog for a time to dry out and disintegrate thoroughly. This not only gets rid of the water, but renders the peat more absorb- ent and in better form to be mixed with the soil. It seems also to make the nitrogenous matters more quickly available for the use of crops to which it is applied. . If dug wet and spread over the land in this condition the peat may dry into hard, tough lumps that for a long time are of no more value to the land than stones or blocks of wood. Aside from this, a ton of wet, freshly dug peat contains only about 225 pounds of usable material, and in this material there is not enough fertilizing substance to justify the labor of digging and hauling it. On the other hand, the dry material, which may be obtained by digging out the peat in the fall and letting it lie on the bog until the next fall, will yield excellent returns, especially if properly composted with coarse manure before being applied to the land. The composting should be done in the ordinary way, by stacking the peat in thin layers alternating with those of stable refuse to a depth of several feet, and allowing the heap to stand for some months, turning over the whole at least once during the time. If the peat alone is used it should be applied liberally as dry as possible; it may be cheaply spread by a manure spreader. Such applications will improve the productiveness of many kinds of soils. ABSORBENT AND DISINFECTANT. The air-dried peat may be used to even better advantage as an absorbent of the valuable nitrogenous liquids of stables and barnyards, which ordinarily are allowed to go to waste. For this purpose the dried peat needs simply to be piled up under cover until used, when it may be spread over the barnyard in layers as needed. If used in the stables, it will not only act as an absorbent of liquids, but, since it checks decomposition and absorbs gases, will be more or less effective as a deodorizer. Dry, powdery peat may also be used for all the purposes for which peat mull is recommended above, and it is greatly superior, for most of them, to lime, ashes, or the more expensive chemical compounds used for deodorizers and disinfectants. Jt is nearly an ideal material for use in earth closets and in other receptacles for moist waste organic matter, and has a value far in excess of the cost of gathering and preparing it. LITTER AND BEDDING FOR STOCK. Dry peat, if free from sticks and lumps, may be successfully used for bedding for all sorts of live stock, equalling for this purpose the more carefully prepared peat or moss litter, because it possesses all 180 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. of the properties of the litter. When used for bedding the thoroughly dried peat should be packed firmly to the depth of 4 or 5 inches on the floor of the stalls or standing room, at the back of which a retaining cleat should be nailed; if well prepared and kept clean the litter will last without renewal for several months. It furnishes a standing room and bed which can not be excelled, being spongy, elastic, and absorbent, and keeping down the usual odors of the stable to a marked degree. Wet peat should not be used for this purpose. INSULATING MATERIAL. As dry, fibrous peat is a good nonconductor of heat, it may be used satisfactorily to protect water pipes from freezing. The peat is probably superior to straw and similar materials commonly used, because it is more durable and, if properly dried, more absorbent, hence would not lose its insulating properties so quickly when laid ina wet place. The only preparation needed is drying, and manifestly the tough, sponge-like turf, or uppermost layers of moss peat, would be especially desirable, because they afford large air spaces between the fibres, and thus give better protection than more compact material. Peat of this kind should also be good packing in refrigerators and ice- houses and similar structures. STOCK FOOD. In Europe peat mull and peat litter prepared from moss and sedge peat have been used as the bases for the preparation of certain kinds of commercial stock foods. The chief ingredient in these prepara- tions besides the peat is the uncrystallized residue, or molasses, from beet or other sugar factories. This molasses has a certain food value for fattening stock, but is difficult to feed because of its stickiness and liquid condition, and the peat is added to obviate these difficulties. Actual analyses, however, by reputable agricul- tural chemists, show that this material has a twofold use—it is eagerly eaten by the cattle, and thus stimulates them to eat more than they otherwise would of fattening food, and the peat itself adds a small amount of proteid substance to the food; the peat also neutralizes certain bad effects of the molasses, so that larger quanti- ties may be eaten. Although the weight of evidence gathered at agricultural experiment stations in the United States seems to show that condimental stock foods of the kinds usually sold are of the nature of stimulants, and do not give sufficient returns in actual gains in weight or condition of the animals to justify such use, the testimony as to the value of a mixture of molasses and peat mull as an addition to the ration ‘of horses and other live stock seems conclusive. Reportsof its beneficial USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 181 effects have been issued from time to time through a number of ~~ years from various European countries and from the army veteri- narians of Germany and England. PACKING MATERIAL. Air-dried peat can be used to advantage for packing eggs, fruit, and vegetables for storage either in bins, pits, cellars, or other recep- tacles, or in refrigerating plants. The nonconducting properties of fibrous peat keep articles packed in it at an even temperature and prevent freezing. In addition peat prevents shrinking due to evaporation and quickly absorbs any water given off. Perishable articles packed in this material are not absolutely protected from decay, because the germs of the micro- scopic plants that cause decay are generally introduced before packing. Unaffected fruit, however, would not be spoiled by contact with that already inoculated, as is often the case in the usual methods of packing for storage, because peat is sufficiently antiseptic to prevent the growth of rot-producing fungi through it, and the reproducing bodies could not pass from point to point through it, as they do through air spaces. Large quantities of peat powder or mull are sent annually to the Canary Islands from Europe for use in packing fruit for shipment, and the demand for the material for the purpose is growing. There seems no good reason why the same substance should not be tried in the United States in connection with the shipment for long distances of the more perishable fruits, PEAT ASHES. A question often is raised as to the value of peat ashes. In general, it may be said that they are not nearly so valuable as those obtained from wood, as they contain a disproportionately large percentage of silica and very ‘little phosphoric acid or potash. The silica probably comes from fine silty sediments in the water in which the peat was formed, and has practically no value in plant growth although the most abundant constituent of most soils. The small proportion of other mineral constituents in peat ash can probably be attributed to the lack of the remains of woody plants, as the mosses and other herbaceous plants, which are the chief peat formers, do not usually accumulate as much mineral matter in their cell walls as do the shrubs and trees. Therefore, while at times it may be advisable to burn over the sur- face of peat beds to remove quickly and cheaply the surface covering of vegetation, it is a great mistake to burn the peat for the sake of getting the ashes, as these are worthless for agricultural purposes in 182 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. comparison with the high value of the peat itself for any of the uses that have been mentioned in this bulletin. It is reported that peat with high ash in certain localities in Florida is burned in specially built furnaces to obtain the ashes for making polishing powders and scouring soaps, the ash containing a large amount of silica in the form of very minute shells of one-celled plants known as diatoms which are so small that they do not produce visible scratches on polished metal, yet so hard that they scour it. CONCLUSIONS. Peat land may be cultivated with profit if the right crops are chosen and the peat is sufficiently drained, decomposed, and fertilized. Many of the peat swamps in the northern part of the country are, however, of a type that will scarcely repay cultivation, since the peat is very poorly decomposed and would be a long time in reaching a state in which it could be safely used for most crops. On the other hand, even poorly decomposed peat may be very profitably used in many ways on farms to increase the fertility of the land, and to add to its productiveness indirectly, by conserving and preserving other more salable articles, or by saving valuable waste matter which could not be kept except by its use. TABLES OF ANALYSES. In the following tables all of the analyses of peat samples made by the United States Geological Survey from the beginning of the present investigation to July 1, 1909, are given for convenience of reference and comparison. COLLECTION OF SAMPLES. The samples from which these analyses have been made, except the samples from New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hamp- shire, and North Carolina, were collected chiefly by field agents of the geological surveys of the States in which the peat was obtained, under the supervision of and in cooperation with the United States Geological Survey. METHODS OF COLLECTION. In the beginning, samples were collected with augers and placed in galvanized-iron and tin cans, such as were used for sending coal samples by mail to the fuel-testing laboratory of the survey, but it was found that the wet peat from many localities attacked the metal, and, after a relatively short time, etched holes in the sides and bot- toms of the containers. This led to the use of glass bottles, after an unsatisfactory test of wooden mailing cases. The bottles finally chosen were ordinary wide-mouthed, 4-ounce size, with tightly fitted corks. Each bottle was rendered mailable by the use of a type of mailing case approved by the postal authorities. The bottles were small because they were used only for wet samples from which the approximate water content of the peat at the time of collection might be determined. For the calorific and chemical analyses larger samples were always collected at the same time as the bottled samples. The larger sam- ples were placed in stout cotton-cloth bags, about 6 inches wide by 9 inches long, provided with a tape for fastening the top. The sam- ples were generally taken at intervals of 2 feet from the top to the bottom of the deposit, from at least three holes in widely separated parts of the deposit, and portions of each sample were put in a bag and in a bottle as they were collected and were given the same note- book number. Where the lower layers of a deposit showed much 183 184 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. silt samples were sometimes rejected and not included with the material sent for analysis, although this was not the general rule. The bags and the wet samples contained in them before packing were more or less thoroughly dried by exposure to the air, after which they were labeled and sent, with proper identification cards, to the chemical laboratory for analysis. The samples, with the exception of those from Maine,? most of which were taken with a ship auger, were collected with the sampling tube already described (pp. 71-72), which has proven very satisfactory for the purpose. ANALYTICAL METHODS. The general method used for the proximate analyses of peat sam- ples was that which was adopted by the committee on coal analyses of the American Chemical Society. The Mahler bomb calorimeter ° was used for determining the calorific or thermal value, 2 grams of peat being taken instead of the 1 gram used in coal analyses. The peat was reduced to the air-dried state by warming it at a tempera- ture of 35° C. (95° F.) in an oven so constructed that a current of warm, dry air passed over the powdered sample until it no longer showed loss of weight on repeated weighing. The time required for this thorough drying was usually from three to five days.° The drying was conducted at a temperature used to prevent the loss of volatile combustible matter known to take place when peat is dried at the higher temperatures (100° to 105° C.) often used. Drying in ovens probably gives more uniform results than drying in the open air of the laboratory, because conditions of atmospheric humidity are more definitely controllable in an oven. MOISTURE. The difficulties in the way of collecting a peat sample, from any depth below the surface, with exactly the quantity of water that the peat contains at that depth have not all been surmounted, and it is doubtful if any of the samples give as high a percentage of water as they would if perfect collection were possible. The moisture analyses are useful, however, in showing that the water content of the samples collected is uniformly high and often above 90 per cent. CALORIFIC VALUE. As previously stated, the calorific value of the peat samples was determined with the Mahler bomb calorimeter. It is stated both in calories and British thermal units on both the air-dried and the aU.S. Geol. Survey Bull. No. 376, pp. 60-61. b Jour. Am. Chem. Soc., vol. 21, p. 1116. ¢ Bull. U. S. Geol. Survey No. 323, 1907, pp. 8-10. USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 185 water-free basis, the latter being derived from the former by calcu- lation. (See pp. 51-52.) No attempt is made in this report to discuss the analyses, which are published to give those who wish either to learn something of the value of peat for fuel in comparison with other substances now in use or to determine the comparative possibilities of the peat from some particular region or deposit. To such persons the tables have a distinct value, but, nevertheless, it should be remembered that before.a given peat bed is exploited careful tests and analyses should be made of many samples, so that the uncertainty arising from the study of a single analysis can be eliminated. 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[PPTs SAR sce siete JO Yjsou eyrur ¥ ‘voedne “Aqunog pondnay STF9 QIb9 D SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON PEAT. Some of the more important publications on the uses of peat are the following: Anrep, A., jr. Investigation of the peat bogs and peat industry of Canada during the season 1909-10. Canada Dept. Mines, Mines Branch, Bull. No.4. 2d ed., 1910. Beacu, A. Peat fuel. Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng., vol. 147, 1900-1901. Beyer, 8. W. Peat deposits in Iowa. Iowa Geol. Survey, vol. 19, 689-733. Borpo.to, J. Peat fuel production. Engineer, Chicago, vol. 43, May 15, 1906, pp. 334-335. BriqueEts as fuel in foreign countries. Special Consular Reports, No. 27, Washington, 1903. Gives an account of the use and manufacture of peat and other kinds of briquets in Europe. Carter, W. E. H. Peat fuel; its manufacture and uses. Rept. Ontario Bureau Mines for 1903. Toronto, 1904. An excellent account of Canadian conditions and methods of peat manufacture at the time of publication. Dancer, L. Torfstreu und Torfmull, Lubeck, Germany, 1901. Davis, CHaRLEs A. Origin and distribution of peat in Michigan. Rept. Mich. State Bd. Geol. Survey, 1906. Lansing, 1907. An estimate of the peat resources of the United States. Engineering Magazine, vol. 37, No.1. New York, 1909. The gasification of peat, Cassier’s Magazine, vol. 36, No.4. New York, 1909. — Production of peat in United States in 1908. Mineral Resources of the United States, U. S. Geol. Survey. Washington, 1909. Production of peat in United States in 1909. Mineral Resources of the United States. U.S. Geol. Survey, Washington, 1911. The preparation and uses of peat as fuel in Alaska. Bull. U.S. Geol. Survey, 442, pp. 101-132. ExENBERG, M. Fuelfrom peat. Journal Iron and Steel Inst., No.1. London, 1909. Euts, R. W. Peat Industry in Canada. Ann. Rept. Ontario Bureau Mines, vol. 2. Frits, J., and ScuroerTer, C. Die Moore der Schweiz, mit Berucksichtigung der gesamten Moorfrage. Beitr. Geol. Schweiz, Geotech., ser. 3. Bern, 1904. A full description of the peat deposits of Switzerland and a discussion of the distribution of peat over the earth. Has an extensive bibliography. Gissinc, E. T. Commercial peat: its uses and its possibilities. London, 1909. and Bsérune, P. R. Peat; its use and manufacture. London, 1907. Harper, R. M. Preliminary report on the peat deposits of Florida. Florida State Geol. Survey, 3d Ann. Rept., 206-375. Hauspie, A. Handbuch der Torigewinnung und Toriverwertung. 2d ed. P. Parey. Berlin, 1904. Iowa Geological Survey Bull. 2. Preliminary report on the peat resources of Iowa. Des Moines, 1905. (See also BEYER, 8. W., above.) Jounson, 8S. W. Peat and its uses. New York, 1866. Kerr, W. A. Peat and its products. Glasgow, 1905. Kouter, T. Die Torfindustrie. Vienna, 1898. Leavirt, T. H. Facts about peat. Boston, 1867. Reprinted in an abridged form, Boston, 1904. LesquErEvx, L. Origin of coal. Ann. Rept. Pennsylvania Geol. Survey, 1885, pp. 95-121. 204 USES OF PEAT FOR FUEL AND OTHER PURPOSES. 205 MacFartanp, T. Moss manure. Bull. 97, Lab. Inland Rev., Dept. of Canada, Ottawa, 1904. MicHIGAN State Board Agriculture. Reports. Lansing, 1853, 1855, 1865, 1878, 1886. State Board Geological Survey. Ann. Reports. Lansing, 1902-1904, 1906- 1908. New Jersey. Annual Report State Geologist, 1905. Trenton, 1906. New York. Reports State Geologist, Nos. 21, 23. Albany, 1903, 1904. Nystrom, E. Peatand lignite, their manufacture and usesin Europe. Canada Dept. of Mines. Ottawa, 1908. and Anrep, 8. A. Investigation of the peat bogs and peat industry of Canada during the season 1908-9. Canada Dept. Mines, Mines Branch Bull. No. 1. Ottawa, 1909. PaRMELEE, C. W., and McCourt, W. E. Peat deposits of northern New Jersey. Ann. Rept. State Geologist of New Jersey, 1905, pp. 223-313. Ryan, H. Reports on the Irish peat industries. Econ. Proc. Roy. Soc., Dublin, vol. 1, parts 10, 13. Dublin, 1907, 1908. Sanxey, H. R. The utilization of peat for making gas or charcoal with recovery of by-products. Engineering, Sept. 11, 1908. Sater, N.S. Fluviatile swamps of New England. Am. Jour. Sci., 3d ser., No. 33, 1887. — Fresh-water morasses of the United States. Tenth Ann. Rept. U.S. Geol. Survey, part 2. 1890. —— Origin, distribution, and commercial value of peat deposits. Sixteenth Ann. Rept. U. 8S. Geol. Survey, part 4. 1895. —— Peat and swamp soils. Twelfth Ann. Rept. U. 8. Geol. Survey. 1891. Swamps of the United States. Science, vol. 7, Mar. 12, 1886, pp. 232-233. Taytor, A. E. Peat deposits of northern Indiana. Ann. Rept. Indiana Dept. Geology and Nat. Res., 1906, pp. 73-298. U. 8. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Soils. Soil Survey reports and maps. The maps show distribution and extent of swamps in the regions examined. U.S. Consular Reports. Contain many references and notes on peat utilization in European countries. U. 8. Geological Survey. Peat deposits of Maine. Bull. 376. E. 8. Bastin and C. A. Davis. Washington, 1909. Topographic maps published by the Survey show the distribution and extent of swamps in the areas covered. PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS EXCLUSIVELY DEVOTED TO THE USES OF PEAT BOGS AND PEAT. (1) The Journal of the American Peat Society. Quarterly. Toledo, Ohio. (2) Mitteilungen des Vereins zur Férderung der Moorkultur im deutschen Reiche. Biweekly. Berlin, Germany. (3) Osterreichische Moorzeitschrift. Monthly. Staab, Austria. (4) Zeitschrift fiir Moorkultur und Torfverwertung. 4-6 numbers a year. Vienna, Austria. (5) Svenska Mosskulturforeningens Tidskrift. Bimonthly. Jénképing, Sweden. (6) Schreiber’s Jahresberichte, Neues tiber Moorkultur und Torfverwertung. Annual. Staab, Austria. (7) Die Verhandlungsberichte der Zentral-Moorkommission in Preussen. (8) Mitteilungen des Hardekulturvereins fiir Schleswig-Holstein. (9) Meddelse fra Mosindustrie-Foreningen. Viborg, Denmark. (10) Finska Mosskulturforeningens Arsbok. Helsingfoxs, Finland. (11) Hedeseskabets Tidskrift. Aarhus, Denmark. (12) Mosebladet. Monthly. Viborg, Denmark. PUBLICATIONS ON FUEL TESTING. The following publications, except those to which a price is affixed, can be obtained free by applying to the Director of the Bureau of Mines, Washington, D.C. The priced publications can be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.: PUBLICATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF MINES. Boutuetin 1. The volatile matter of coal, by H. C. Porter and F. K. Ovitz. 1910. 56 pp. 1 pl. Butietin 2. North Dakota lignite as a fuel for power-plant boilers, by D. T. Randall and Henry Kreisinger. 1910. 42 pp., 1 pl. Buttetin 3. The coke industry of the United States as related to the foundry, by Richard Moldenke. 1910. 32 pp. Buuietin +. Features of producer-gas power-plant development in Europe, by R.H. Fernald. 1910. 27 pp., 4 pls. Buuiietin 5. Washing and coking tests of coal at Denver, Colo., July 1, 1908, to June 30, 1909, by A. W. Belden, G. R. Delamater, J. W. Groves, and K. M. Way. 1910. 62 pp. Buuuetin 6. Coals available for illuminating-gas manufacture, by A. H. White and Perry Barker. 1911. 77 pp., 4 pls. Britetin 7. Essential factors in the formation of producer gas, by J. K. Clement, L. H. Adams, and C. N. Haskins. 1911. 58 pp., 1 pl. BuLietin 8. The flow of heat through furnace walls, by W. T. Ray and Henry Kreisinger. 1911. 32 pp. Butietin 9. Recent development of the producer-gas power plant in the United States, by R.H. Fernald. 82pp.,2pls. Reprint of United States Geological Survey Bulletin 416. BULLETIN 11. The purchase of coal by the Government under specifications, by G.S. Pope. 80 pp. Reprint of United States Geological Survey Bulletin 428. BULLETIN 12. Apparatus and methods for the sampling and analysis of furnace gases, by J. C. W. Frazer and E. J. Hoffman. 1911. 22 pp. BULLETIN 13. Résumé of producer-gas investigations, by R. H. Fernald and C. D. Smith. 1911. 393 pp., 12 pls. BuLieTIN 14. Briquetting tests of lignite, at Pittsburgh, Pa., 1908-9; witha chapter on sulphite-pitch binder, by C. L. Wright. 1911. 64 pp., 11 pls. TECHNICAL PareR 1. The sampling of coal in the mine, by J. A. Holmes. 1911. 18 pp. TECHNICAL Paper 2. The escape of gas from coal, by H. C. Porter and F. K. Ovitz. 1911. 14 pp. TrecunicaL Paper 3. Specifications for the purchase of fuel oil for the Government, with directions for sampling oil and natural gas, by I. C. Allen. 1911. 13 pp. 206 USES OF PEAT FOR FUL aND OTHER PURPOSES. 207 PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. PROFESSIONAL ParEr 48. Report on the operations of the coal-testing plant of the United States Geological Survey at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., 1904; E. W. Parker, J. A. Holmes, M. R. Campbell, committee in charge. 1906. In three parts. 1492 pp., 13 pls. $1.50. Butvetin 261. Preliminary report on the operations of the coal-testing plant of the United States Geological Survey at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., 1904; E. W. Parker, J. A Holmes, M. R. Campbell, committee in charge. 1905. 172 pp. 10 cents. Buutetin 290. Preliminary report on the operations of the fuel-testing plant of the United States Geological Survey at St. Louis, Mo., 1905, by J. A. Holmes. 1906. 240 pp. 20 cents. BuLLeTIN 323. Experimental work conducted in the chemical laboratory of the United States fuel-testing plant, St. Louis, Mo., January 1, 1905, to July 31, 1906, by N. W. Lord. 1907. 49 pp. 10 cents. Buietin 325. A study of four hundred steaming tests made at the fuel-testing plant, St. Louis, Mo., 1904, 1905, and 1906, by L. P. Breckenridge. 1907. 196 pp. 20 cents. Buietin 332. Report of the United States fuel-testing plant at St. Louis, Mo., January 1, 1906, to June 30, 1907; J. A. Holmes, in charge. 1908. 299 pp. 25 cents. Butetin 334. The burning of coal without smoke in boiler plants; a preliminary report, by D. T. Randall. 1908. 26 pp. 5 cents. (See Bull. 373.) BuLietin 336. Washing and coking tests of coal and cupola tests of coke, by Richard Moldenke, A. W. Belden, and G. R. Delamater. 1908. 76 pp. 10 cents. BULLETIN 362. Mine sampling and chemical analyses of coals tested at the United States fuel-testing plant, Norfolk, Va., in 1907, by J. S. Burrows. 1908. 23 pp. 5 cents. Buiuetin 363. Comparative tests of run-of-mine and briquetted coal on loco- motives, including torpedo-boat tests and some foreign specifications for briquetted fuel, by W. F. M. Goss. 1908. 57 pp., 4 pls. Butietin 367. Significance of drafts in steam-boiler practice, by W. T. Ray and Henry Kreisinger. 1909. 61 pp. BuLietin 368. Washing and coking tests of coal at Denver, Colo., by A. W. Belden, G. R. Delamater, and J. W. Groves. 1909. 54 pp., 2 pls. 10 cents. BuLietin 373. The smokeless combustion of coal in boiler plants, by D. T. Randall and H. W. Weeks. 1909. 188 pp. 20 cents. BuLietin 382. The effect of oxygen in coal, by David White. 1909. 74 pp., 3 pls. Buitetin 385. Briquetting tests at the United States fuel-testing plant, Norfolk, Va., 1907-8, by C. L. Wright. 1909. 41 pp., 9 pls. BuLetin 392. Commercial deductions from comparisons of gasoline and alcohol tests on internal-combustion engines, by R. M. Strong. 1909. 38 pp. Buuitetin 393. Incidental problems in gas-producer tests, by R. H. Fernald, C.D. Smith, J. K. Clement, and H. A. Grine. 1909. 29 pp. Butietin 402. The utilization of fuel in locomotive practice, by W. F. M. Goss. 1909. 28 pp. Butietin 403. Comparative tests of run-of-mine and briquetted coal on the torpedo boat Biddle, by Walter T. Ray and Henry Kreisinger. 1909. 49 pp. Buttetin 412. Tests of run-of-mine and briquetted coal in a locomotive boiler, by Walter T. Ray and Henry Kreisinger. 1909. 32 pp. *661°—Bull. 16—11——14 IN DEX. A. Page. { Aakerman, R., on producer gas. 149 Absorbent, peat as......-.-.--- 179 Acetic acid from peat............----.------- 133 ViEld- Ofer ai wasawiciciw tees 137 Acids, vegetable, in peat é 46 Agriculture, use of peat in..............--- 177-182 Alcohol from peat ..........-.---..--- 133, 136, 165 Alfred, Ontario, demonstration peat plant at. 98-99 Algoma, Wis., peat, analysis of...........-.- 201 Alton, Me., peat, analysis of............-.--- 194 Ammonium compounds from peat. 134, 136, 166-167 Analyses of peat 48, 53, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 110, 122, 136, 137, 186-203 Analysis of peat, procedure in.....-.......- 50,184 proximate, definition of.........----..-- 49 ultimate, definition of .... 2 50 Antigo, Wis., peat, analysis of............... 201 199 Arkport, N. Y., peat, analysis of ............ Ash, composition of.........- se determination of. . effect of.........-- source of..........---- Ashes, peat, value of.........-. Ashton, Fla., peat, analysis of. . : Asphalt from peat, yield of...............- Auburndale, Fla., peat, analysis of.......... 191 Augusta, Me., peat, analysis of seus 193 Ayers Junction, Me., peat, analysis of........ 195 B. Back, Sweden, peat-powder plant at. 112 Bangor, Me., peat, analysis of............... 195 Bartow Junction, Fla., peat, analysis of... .. 191 Bayard, Fla., peat, analysis of............- 189, 190 Beaver Marsh, Conn., peat, analysis of....... 188 Bedding for stock, peat as...............-- 179-180 Benton Falls, Me., peat, analysis of.......... 193 Bethel, Conn., peat, analysis of.............. 186 Beuerberg, Bavaria, peat-coking plant at .... 128, 129, 133 Bibliography. ccecseeusnecucee osmmcicinmeeins 204-205 Biochemical agencies in peat formation...... 40 Black Lake, N. Y., peat, heating value of... 53, 121-122 Blast-furnace gas, calorific value of........... 148 COM POSLION OF jos. seicseyeewe essences 148 Bloomingdale, N. Y., peat, analysis of....... 198 Bogs, peat, drainage of, importance of ....... 78 considerations determining. ......... 36, 78 extent of, computation of.......... 69-70, 71-73 location of, importance of............--...- 69 peat from, chemical tests of.............- 73-75 mechanical tests of..........-..-...- 75-76 preparation of.......------eeeseceeeeeeee 77 Bogs, peat, price of, bearing of............- prospecting of.........-. considerations in... importance of thorough. POOMMOT co hiiendaee smallest workable. ..... structure of, significance of. . utilization of...........--. yield of, determination of ............... 73 Briquets, peat, advantages of...........----- 116 COSROP MA RING os cciecrpeccmisieiarieercicints 119-121, 125 fuel efficiency of... 2 +.2-<.22se00esess 121-122 method of making............--.-------- 117 plants for, cost of..........--.00s.00+-+ 119-121 preliminary peat treatment for........ 118-119 presses for 117 CAPACITY Of a, <...