214 GRAVEL AND PLACER MINING IN ALASKA. [bull. 263. 
St. Louis, has been courteously furnished for this report by Mr. 
Marius R. Campbell: 
The results of tests made during the past season at the United States Geological 
Survey coal-testing plant at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis proved 
conclusively that producer gas of such a quality that it may be used directly in a gas 
engine can be made from bituminous coals and lignites as well as from the highly 
carbonized fuels, such as anthracite, coke, charcoal, and wood, that alone have been 
used in the past for this purpose, and strange as it may appear, the lignites and 
lignitic coals have yielded better results than those ordinarily classed as bituminous. 
This means that the low-grade coals of the western half of the United States may 
have a value for the production of power equal to that of the best West Virginia 
coal as it is used at the present time. 
The equipment by which these results were obtained consists of a Taylor gas pro- 
ducer with economizer, scrubber, tar extractor, purifier, and gas holder, furnished 
by R. D. Wood & Co., of Philadelphia, and a gas engine of 235 B. H. P., furnished 
by the Westinghouse Machine Company, of Pittsburg. The great difficulty in the 
past in using bituminous coals in the producer has been the extraction of the tarry 
matter from the gas. With the above equipment the tar and sulphur in the gas is 
almost completely removed, so that these substances give little or no trouble in the 
gas engine. 
It appears, then, that the interior must for the present depend for 
fuel on its timber resources, such as they are. The camps of Seward 
Peninsula will probably adopt crude oil as the most economical fuel if 
the price can be brought down to $2 a barrel delivered at Nome. There 
appears to be a need at Nome and some of the other large camps of an 
oil-tank and pipe-line system by which the oil can be cheaply trans- 
ferred from steamers, stored, and pumped to the various producing 
creeks adjacent to the coast. The native spruce timber will afford a 
fuel supply to the region east of Niukluk River, if gold discoveries 
are made there. 
For any of the camps in the South Coast region there is an abun- 
dant supply of fuel, as wood may be had for the cutting, and coal can 
be had at a comparatively low cost. 
