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“ON THE ADVANTAGEOUS USE OF A GASEOUS ESCAPE. 81 
the many benefits such visits confer on a neighbourhood. The saving already 
effected by the application to one boiler is equal to £350 a-year, and the total 
saving of doing away with the use of coal in the boilers, and consequently 
with attendance, fire-bars, bricks, would at full work exceed £2000 a-year. 
The savings I have mentioned are so serious in amount, that they cannot safely 
be neglected by the iron trade. 
But although I save the use of 35 tons of coal a week in the stoves, and 
35 tons a week in one of the boilers by taking off a portion of the heated 
air from No. 9 furnace, and although the gas sent to the boiler wastes 
half its heat in the passage, there still remains one-half of the quantity usually 
escaping, passing off the tunnel head. If I closed the tunnel head of No. 9, 
so as to collect all the gases, it would therefore appear that I should obtain a 
heating power equal to the use of 140 tons of coal a week in air furnaces, and 
that merely by the passage of such gases through the boilers and stoves in 
contact with iron vessels, containing the water and air required to be heated. 
But as I only consume about 100 tons of coal a week in the No. 9 furnace, 
this is 40 tons more effect than the whole coal used, which melts besides 
from 150 to 160 tons of iron ores and limestone flux, and produces 50 or 
60 tons of pig-iron a week, and all this while I have not consumed the gases, 
but merely received by contact with good conductors some part of the high 
temperature acquired in the furnace. What other inference can I draw but 
one, that a very large proportion of the fuel used in reverberatory furnaces 
is unprofitably wasted? for it would appear to be more profitable to employ 
a blast-furnace, if as a gas generator only, even if you smelted nothing in it, 
and carried off its heated vapours by flues to your boilers and stoves, than to 
employ a separate fire to each boiler and each stove. These considerations 
irresistibly suggest to me a great revolution in metallurgical practice ; a new 
arrangement in fact of furnaces and works, by which considerably above one 
million a-year might be saved in the iron trade alone. 
_ The following is the analysis of the gas escaping from the Ystalyfera an- , 
thracite furnaces made by Dr. Schafhaeutl. 
First, of the gas taken off 16 feet below the surface of coal and mine in the 
furnace, he gave the following result :— ‘ 
Carhonic'acihion.2. Vwi ee. 00°136 
Carbonic oxide ................ 18°974 
Pigdropenas ). Say hee. eS dee 27°844 
Light carburetted hydrogen ...... 3°212 
Sulphurous acid with traces of arseni- 
uretted and phosphuretted hydrogen _trace 
Nitrogen) 222). OG wes esse 49-844 
100-000 
A very considerable change takes place when the gas has access to the at- 
mosphere. 
At | foot only below the surface of the coal and mine in the furnace, the 
following is his analysis :— 
CO APDOWIC BEI oe: oe, oi miniai nin 48 a 9:546 
Carbonic oxide ............06.- 12-012 
EUV OTOR ED seg S I oi nietnne,¥ Boocridiesn’ 21°278 
Light carburetted hydrogen........ 2°548 
Sulphurous acid with traces of arseni- 
uretted and phosphuretted hydrogen 0-111 
1 OE RST 8. TET nga aR ce 54505 
z 100-000 
_ 1848. — G 
