100 
TENTH REPORT. 
The primary difficulty in using peat for fuel, lies in the great amount of 
water which it contains, and the slowness with which this disappears, even 
when the peat is placed in a dry place. This is due to the fact that the plant 
cells and tissues which make up the peat, hold the water, not only in the 
cavities of the cells themselves, but in their walls as well, and give it up 
very slowly, and only by evaporation, yielding but a small per cent of the 
total amount of water under pressure. 
These facts, however, were only learned in Europe, after long-continued 
and expensive experimentation, costing in the aggregate millions of dollars. 
Through a period of years, attempts were made to get quickly rid of the 
water in peat by filtering and pressure, both by the application of vacuum 
and hydraulic pressure, reaching tons to the square inch, and also by the 
use of centrifugal machines, but, while the history of these attempts is of 
great interest, it cannot be entered into here at any length. 
Nor can an account be given of the efforts made, and the machinery 
devised, to rapidly and thoroughly dry peat, as it was dug, by the direct appli- 
cation of heat generated by the use of fuel of various types, for, if this were 
done, there would be time for no other discussion. It is, therefore, perhaps 
sufficient to sav that the best and most conservative students of the European 
peat fuel industry all agree that, up to the present time, no financially suc- 
cessful process of drying wet peat by the application of artificial heat has been 
discovered, and the only feasible way for accomplishing this is that which was 
first used, namely, exposure to the heat of the sun and air. 
The reason for this has been summed up fully in the statement that three 
tons of dried peat, or its equivalent in heat units, are required to produce 
one ton by this method, so that, even where fuel is to be had for the cost 
of handling, as is the case of the refuse peat taken out of the bog, this cost 
Is prohibitive. This is apparent when it is remembered that, even if the 
refuse is used in a partly-dried condition, a ton of fuel can only be obtained 
at the cost of digging and drying five or six tons of wet material, until it is 
free enough from moisture to burn. 
Moreover, it is also well known that the higher the water content of any 
fuel, the less its efficiency when burned; thus, peat waste, having from 25 
to 50 per cent of moisture, is reduced in fuel value, compared with the same 
material, perfectly dry, somewhat more than one per cent of the total num- 
ber of heat units which could be developed from it, for every per cent of water 
which it contains. 
Thus, giving dry peat a fuel value of 100, that with 25 per cent water has 
an efficiency of 72, that with 30 per cent moisture but 63, and that with 50 
per cent water only 41 per cent of the fuel value of the perfectly dry material. 
It is, therefore, apparent that the amount of heat developed by one ton of the 
perfectly dry peat, can only be obtained by using a ton and a quarter, a ton 
and a third, and a ton and six-tenths of that, which has 25, 30 and 50 per 
cent moisture, respectively, hence the amount to be handled both on the bog, 
and at the furnaces, is increased in direct proportion, and the cost of the 
artificially dried peat, instead of being three tons, has been increased to three 
and three-fourths, four, or even nearly five tons of material to be produced, 
according to the water content, and this excess must be charged to the cost 
of production, to which, also, must be added the cost of putting the dry 
peat on the market, and other fixed charges. 
Still other efforts to improve the quality of peat, and to make it more 
transportable, are those directed to convert it into charcoal, or coke, and, 
while the problem of doing this successfully has been a complicated one, 
