Specification of Thomas Stirling : manufacture of fuel.

  • Stirling, Thomas.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of Thomas Stirling : manufacture of fuel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Stirling's Improvements in the Manufacture of Fuel. manner in which the same is to be performed, are fully described and ascertained in and by the following statement thereof (that is to say) :— Various attempts have been made of late years to. manufacture fuel from small coal with tar and pitch or other such bituminous matters combined with clay or such like earth, and to mould the same into blocks, and by pressure to 5 get such blocks into as hard a consistency as possible. Now the object of my Invention is to submit manufactured fuel from such materials to the process of artificial heat whilst in the moulds, whereby I am enabled to produce most beneficial effects by rendering blocks of such fuel more enduring even under combustion than when made according to processes which have heretofore 10 been resorted to. And although my Invention does not relate to any particular combination of quantities of the materials of which the fuel to be manufactured according to my Invention are to be composed, yet in explaining the best means of carrying out my Invention, I will describe a composition of fuel such as I usually make, and which I believe will be found the best relative proportions 15 of the materials ; at the same time I wish it to be understood that I do not confine myself to the quantities herein mentioned, as my Invention above stated does not consist of the compound but in the mode of treating such compounds by a process of heat in moulds. The relative combination of parts I prefer to use is as follows :—One hundred pounds of vegetable tar, 20 three hundred pounds mineral or coal tar, two thousand two hundred and.forty pounds of small coal, which should pass through a sieve of six holes or meshes to each square inch. Clay dissolved in water to the consistence of tar, of which solution one hundred and five pounds; other ingredients may be mixed therewith, as heretofore, but I do not consider it desirable or beneficial so to 25 do. I prefer to mix these matters in the following manner :—I heat the tar in an iron vessel, and stir in the solution of clay, and boil up the compound, then run off such boiling mixture into another pan or vessel placed over a furnace to keep the compound as fluid as possible ; and as it flows in I gradually pour in and mix the small coal as intimately as possible, keeping the whole 30 well stirred; and when thoroughly mixed, I put the fuel, thus far made, into moulds of the size desired. I prefer using rectangular cast-iron moulds similar to brick moulds, but I have several moulds combined together, so as to be capable of moulding several blocks at the same time. I place the com¬ pound or fuel into these moulds as soon as mixed as above described, and then 35 place the moulds so filled into an oven or kiln kept heated to two hundred and fifty degrees to three hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, and let them remain therein for an hour or an hour and a half. I then withdraw them, and permit the blocks of fuel to cool in the moulds, and when cold are removed