164 RECENT ADVANCE IN OIL BURNING. 
DISCUSSION. 
THE CHAIRMAN:—Will Rear Admiral Dyson discuss this paper? 
ReaR ApmrIRAL C. W. Dyson, U. S. N., Member:—I was very much pleased on 
learning that Mr. Peabody was to present an article on fuel burning before the Society. 
I have been closely associated with Mr. Peabody for many years in the develop- 
ment of pressure atomization for the burning of oil fuel and am thoroughly cognizant 
with the work which he has done. Mr. Peabody, under the auspices of the Babcock 
& Wilcox Company, has been one of the few engineers in this country who has devoted 
himself full-heartedly toward the perfection and the development of the possibilities 
of burning oil fuel with present pressure atomization. I think it is due to Mr. Peabody 
that the whirling plate has supplanted the screw thread for obtaining whirling motion 
of the oil inside of the burners. He is one of the few that encouraged us in fighting 
to retain this system of atomization in the Navy, while the majority of others were 
extremely antagonistic to it, and his farsightedness is shown by the results obtained 
in burning oil with this system today. 
He refers in his article to the Peabody-Fisher type of burner. My first experience 
with this burner was in the case of the boilers developed by the Navy Department for 
use in the 50-foot steamers. These boilers were required to provide steam for 200 shaft 
horse-power, and the space in which they could be accommodated was so limited that the 
length of furnace was only about 4 feet, while the total cubical content of the furnace 
was about 30 cubic feet. The short length of the furnace necessitated the development 
of a special burner that would insure oil being consumed within a short distance of the 
burner tip, for if this were not so, the unconsumed oil at the tip of the flame struck against 
the end wall of furnace, causing a building up of carbon and a formation of heavy smoke. 
After various attempts we tried using the Fisher burner and met with instant success. 
With this burner in this small furnace we have burned nearly 14 pounds of oil per cubic 
foot of furnace volume, have evaporated nearly 14 pounds of water per pound of oil, 
while the smoke formed has been small in amount and very light in color. The burner 
has the advantage of being able to fix the angle of the flame cone to almost any amount 
desired up to nearly 180 degrees, and it is this feature which makes it so satisfactory 
for burning oil in a furnace of short length. As pointed out by Mr. Peabody, it also 
has another advantage of enormous elasticity in capacity, thus doing away with the 
necessity of changing burner tips in passing from large capacities to small. 
Engineers must soon become educated to the point where they will realize that the 
successful and economic burning of oil fuel requires quite an education in the art, if it 
may be so called. The Navy early appreciated this and, with it in mind, developed 
the Oil Fuel Testing Plant at the Navy Yard, Philadelphia. This plant paid for itself 
over and over in value received by us from it, and during the war its facilities were util- 
ized to provide what may be called a college course in oil-fuel burning for officers and 
enlisted men of the Navy in developing crews for the enormous number of destroyers 
which were being put into commission. In addition to these schools we also had a training 
school at Fore River and one at Mare Island. Asa result the new destroyers, upon 
first going to sea, always had a nucleus of trained fuel-oil burner men among their crews. 
In my opinion Mr. Peabody, in his work, will stand in the first rank of those who 
in this country have done the most for the successful burning of oil fuel. 
