AN IDEAL FUEL MANUFACTURED OUT OF 

 WASTE PRODUCTS 



The American Coal Briquetting Industry 

 By Guy Elliott Mitchell 



HOW perfectly formed some of 

 the hills of that range are, lying 

 just to the left of the railroad. 

 They look symmetrical enough to be 

 artificial." 



"Well, they do, for a fact. To tell you 

 the truth, they are. They were made by 

 men." 



"Made by men? Mound-builders? 

 Why, there are dozens of them ; those 

 abrupt slopes are hundreds, almost thou- 

 sands of feet long — a regular mountain 

 chain." 



"True, and they are uniformly the 

 most valuable mountains in- existence ; 

 but they are, indeed, man-made ; at the 

 same time they are waste. They are 

 mountains of solid carbon — coal dust — 

 culm and slack from the mines — millions 

 of tons of it." 



More than one traveler has remarked 

 thus on the huge coal-dust hills which 

 break the skyline of the various coal- 

 mining regions. Last year the coal 

 mined in the United States was 445,000,- 

 000 tons ; but in the process of mining 



A HILTv CONTAINING THOUSANDS TONS ANTHRACITE COAI, WASTE, OR REJECTED 



CULM : SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA 



Probably 200,000,000 tons of anthracite, worth $200,000,000, were lost last year as dust 

 and waste, which, if converted into briquets, as in Germany or F'rance, could have been 

 profitably used. The heating value of this coal dust is even greater than that of the marketed 

 coal. Billions of dollars have been thus wasted in the United States since coal mining began. 



