SMOKE ABATEMENT 



NOTES ON THE PROGRESS OF THE MOVEMENT TO 

 SECURE A CLEANER AND PURER ATMOSPHERE 



By JOHN B. C. KERSHAW, F.I.C. 



Member of the London and Hamburg Smoke. Abatement Societies, and of the Committee for the 



Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution 



Introduction 



The progress of thought and achievement that has marked all 

 branches of scientific knowledge during the past fourteen years 

 has not been without its influence upon the efforts to secure 

 a cleaner and purer atmosphere. In the United Kingdom, in 

 Germany, and in America, the apathy which marked the closing 

 years of the nineteenth-century, with regard to the problems 

 of smoke, has given place to keen interest and activity, and in 

 all three countries much good work has been accomplished in 

 arousing public attention to the enormous losses and evils that 

 result from the dust and dirt suspended in the atmosphere. 

 For if, as the majority of those who have studied the problem 

 assert, smoke is a sign of inefficiency and loss, then the smoke- 

 abatement movement is in reality one for increasing the 

 efficiency and economy of all power-plants, and for lengthening 

 the life of the world's resources of solid and liquid fuel. 



No new or remarkable discoveries relating to combustion or 

 to the utilisation of fuel have marked the progress of the last 

 fourteen years. 1 The correct principles of combustion, and the 

 conditions required for the smokeless combustion of bituminous 

 fuel in boiler-furnaces, were enunciated by C. Wye Williams 

 (a Liverpool engineer) seventy-five years ago, and a perusal of 

 the book which he published in 1839, under the title of The 

 Combustion of Coal, will prove that for three-quarters of a 

 century sound scientific teaching has been available on this 

 subject, for those who cared to make use of it. 



Williams pointed out clearly that the combustion of 



1 Bone's system of flameless combustion is based on an application of a very 

 old principle discovered by Sir Humphry Davy in 18 16. 



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