CHARACTERISTICS OF PHILIPPINE COAL. ue 
showed it to contain 62.6 per cent of combustible matter. No 
comparative tests were made with other coals. 
In 1908, I determined the steaming value of available Philip- 
pine coals as measured by kilograms of water evaporated per ki- 
logram of fuel when used under a boiler, as compared with the 
foreign coals offered on the market in this Archipelago. Care- 
ful and complete records have been preserved of each test and, 
therefore, it should be possible for engineers to determine from 
the data which are given, whether or not the conditions were 
those best suited to the coal under examination, and when a 
price is established for these coals, the results will form a basis 
of comparison not only as to the water evaporated per kilogram 
of fuel, but also in regard to the water evaporated per peso of 
fuel cost. In commercial operations the all-important question 
is to find the fuel which will run a plant with the least financial 
outlay. 
As the supply of material has generally been limited, except 
in the case of Australian coal which has always been the fuel of 
the Bureau of Science, only a limited amount of preliminary 
experimenting could be done to determine the best practice in 
regard to firing and to gain information regarding the fuel 
before beginning the test. An engineer always needs experience 
with a coal to burn it in the most effective manner. Promis- 
cuous tests of coals made under different conditions are not at 
all comparable, for it is impossible to discover whether the va- 
riations are due to the fuel, the apparatus, or the manipulation. 
In the following tests, many factors have been eliminated by 
using the same plant * and the same personnel; the others have 
been carefully controlled by using the same apparatus and main- 
taining all manipulations and general conditions as nearly con- 
stant as possible. The fuels were all fired in the gridiron- 
grate furnace of the Bureau of Science, for which the usual 
fuel is Australian coking coal; in fact it is especially suited to 
and designed for the consumption of coal of this class. A fur- 
nace with a short firebox, planned for a high-grade, steaming 
coal, which burns with a short, hot, smokeless flame, is entirely 
unsuited to Philippine coal. In the following tests, the ad- 
vantage in this regard was in favor of the Australian coal. 
The results of the tests are shown in Table IV. 
*This Journal, Sec. A (1908), 3, 301. The headings “Oxygen” of the 
fourth and “Nitrogen” of the fifth vertical columns, respectively, in the 
Table on page 318 should be interchanged. 
“The losses through radiation and conduction do not vary greatly for 
any given installation. 
