248 



DEVELOPMENTS IN OIL BURNING. 



advantage for those forms of apparatus which, by various methods of treat- 

 ment of the oil, admit the fuel to the furnace in the form of vapor. These 

 systems, while successful in metallurgical work, have no standing in boiler 

 practice for the reason that not only do they show no gain in efficiency but, on 

 the contrary, they result in very poor capacity, the latter feature alone making 

 them undesirable for marine use. At the same time some of these devices are 

 ingenious and interesting and I have taken as an illustration of the vapo- 

 rizing type of burner an apparatus patented in England in 1907 by Mr. 

 L. Diirr (Fig. i). There are two burners in the form of retorts, a big one 

 and a little one, the idea being that the little burner by playing a flame on the 

 outside of the big burner will gasify the oil for the big burner and for itself 

 as well. Several patents followed this one, each correcting some short- 

 coming of the preceding. 



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Fig. I. — DORR Burner. 



The well known Koerting process patent, taken out in this country in 

 1905, contains a claim which covers: heating the liquid oil unmixed with air 

 or other gases to a point above its normal boiling-point, maintaining the oil 

 in a liquid state by pressure and delivering the superheated oil into a com- 

 bustion chamber supplied with air, whereby the rapid disintegration and 

 vaporization of oil in the presence of air are secured. 



The idea here, as is more fully pointed out in the patent specifications, 

 is that the heat stored in the oil at high pressure will cause the liquid to 

 flash into vapor when released at low pressure, exactly as water, heated 

 above 212° F. under pressure, would flash into steam if released to the 

 atmosphere. This is an exceedingly ingenious way of converting at least 

 part of the oil into vapor without atomizing it, but as a matter of fact no 

 gain results from this partial gasifying of the oil. This question has been 



