236 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



WATER AS FUEL. 



M. Moigno, the editor of the Paris Cosmos, describes the following 

 application of steam, as having been witnessed by himself in a work- 

 shop in Paris. He says : 



It has long been known that when oxygen and hydrogen gases 

 unite and form steam, as they do by their union, a most intense heat 

 is produced. In this case, in fact, we have the oxyhydrogen blow- 

 pipe, which, though very small, is yet a furnace of most intense heat. 

 It is now found that by exposing steam in its turn to a very high tem- 

 perature, the atom of oxygen and the atom of hydrogen, of both of 

 which, in union with each other, an atom of steam consists, tend to 

 separate again, and in fact may be actually separated merely by pre- 

 senting to the very hot steam some substance with which one of the ele- 

 ments of the steam either the oxygen or the hydrogen, tends to unite, 

 rather than the other. But no sooner are the oxygen and hydrogen 

 separate than they tend to rush together again, producing in the act 

 of union the heat of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. In order to obtain 

 this wonderful power of heat, all that is necessary, as now appears, 

 is to raise steam to a very high temperature, and then to let it loose, 

 when very hot, upon some body which tends to unite with one of its 

 elements, its oxygen, for instance, as is the case with common 

 fuel. The hot steam immediately sets the fuel on fire. The heat 

 that is produced is most intense, and there is reason to hope that the 

 combustion may be so regulated that all the oxygen of the steam may 

 reunite again with all the hydrogen of the steam, so that the whole 

 result of the combustion shall be merely that the fuel is transformed 

 by the intense heat into- aeriform matter. And thus a furnace may be 

 so arranged that while its heat is employed as usual in generating 

 steam in a boiler for a steam engine, all the smoke shall be gas fit for 

 illuminating purposes, and ready for being transferred into the gas- 

 ometer. M. Moigno mentions that in the apparatus which he saw 

 a jet of hot steam from a tube which was only one millimetre (about 

 one twenty-fifth of an inch) in diameter, when made to play upon a 

 mass of charcoal in a furnace, lighted it up into a most vivid fire. 

 And when to the charcoal there were added a few handfuls of the 

 Boghead mineral, which yielded bicarbonate of hydrogen instead of 

 simple hydrogen, the light was dazzling, and the flame arose so as to 

 sometimes reach the roof of the workshop. The only point that is 

 staggering is the immense heat which is required to be imparted to the 

 superheated steam. Thus, for the full effect 1,000 Cent, is named, 

 that is, 1.832 Fah. ; that is a heat at which silver and almost copper 

 melts. And this is said to be produced by having the steam heater 

 immersed in a bath of melted tin. 



The Revue Universelle of Paris, of a later date, has also the follow- 

 ing article respecting the use of water in facilitating certain processes 

 of combustion. It says: " The vapor of water has already been util- 

 ized in metallurgy as an agent of oxidation in the roasting of cer- 

 tain minerals, particularly to facilitate the separation of the com- 

 pounds of antimony and arsenic in metallic sulphurets. For several 

 years attempts have been made to employ the calorific power of 

 the hydrogen contained in water, and it is the same line of invention 



