How to build up furnace efficiency; a hand-book of fuel economy ...

Front matter

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How to Build Up rurnace Efficiency

A Hand-book of Fuel Economy

Preface To The Fifteenth Edition

In the early part of 1908 the author tendered a manuscript to the editor of an engineering magazine. It was returned with the following comment:

"Your paper is too technical. We get more technical articles than we can use. We want practical articles written in a popular way and we can't get them. Cut out the "high-brow" stuff and let us have something- that the great mass of our readers can peruse Av^ith interest and profit."

The result of this advice was the first edition of "How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency," published in 1908. It was brought out with many misgivings. Was it really possible to treat the rather technical subject of combustion in a really popular way — something that had never been attempted by anyone before? Would the public want such a treatment even if the treatment were successful? These questions were not long in being answered. The first edition was exhausted, almost as soon as the announcement of publication was made. Succeeding and larger editions fiollowed the first one.

The present edition, counting the foreign editions, is the fifteenth complete publication, and translations are now beingmade for other foreign editions. Counting all publications, the book has now reached its ninety-fifth thousand.

Many things were omitted in the previous editions that should have been said and some things were said that might have been omitted. In the present edition, sufficient charts, diagrams and illustrations are used to make clear some of the things that it is hard to explain in the printed page. Certain instruments and apparatus designed by the author are illustrated. In showing these it is not intended to disparage other apparatus of like character. The illustrations are given for the sole purpose of showing the "tools" that the author has used in prosecuting combustion studies and in working out specific furnace efficiency problems in many plants.

Cartoons have been used rather liberally in this edition and it is hoped that they will serve to emphasize some of the arguments that the author has tried to make.

It is in no spirit of self-flattery that the author refers to the past success of his book. If credit is due anyone it belongs to the editor who offered the advice above quoted.

AN APPEAL.

The author feels that a real service is being performed in passing this advice along to other writers. Let us stop writing for technical men who are already well grounded in all the theory of engineering. There are relatively few of such men as compared with the great multitude who want results first and who are content to let theories rest until results have been accomplished. Treat the engineering subject in a really popular way and your book will be read by appreciative thousands. Treat it in a, really technical way and it will be read by a few hundreds.

Very little is said in this book relating to the theory of combustion. The author has tried to write for the men who pay for the fuel and the men who burn it. They are interested i:i theory, of course, but they are more interested in practical and immediate results. They expect, in a work of this kind, advice and suggestions that will be helpful — something that they can apply at once in the every-day work of operating- an every-day steam power plant.

One can easily determine where to begin when setting about to discuss the chemistry of combustion, but it is difficult to determine where and when to stop. For this reason and the others given, the author has thought best to make no beginning at all. In the present edition of "How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency," as in the previous ones, the sole effort has been to show the Manager, Superintendent, Engineers and Firemen of the power plant how they may proceed at one? to actually work a real reduction in the coal bills. To this practical end no understanding of theories is necessary. The unlettered fireman may become an expert flue gas analyst and reach the very top notch of efficiency in the combustion of fuel without knowing or caring what the atomic weight of carbon may be or why one atom of carbon unites with two of oxygen to form the gas COl>. It has been represented and it is generally understood that the contrary is true. Xo more mischievous representation was ever made with reference to any engineering proposition. It is costing the power plants of the country millions of dollars. The average steam plant wastes a quarter of its fuel. It will go on wasting that quarter

6 Preface.

until it is recognized that the men to stop the waste are the ones who are doing the wasting.

To burn coal or any other fuel economically is mainly a matter of method and as the method to be used varies with the character of the fuel and the conditions under which it is to be burned, the use of certain apparatus to determine the proper method is necessary in every power plant. It would be, indeed, unfortunate if the apparatus called for special skill or special knowledge on the part of the user. Any man who can read a scale and watch the nickering flame of a tallow candle is qualified to bring any boiler furnace up to the highest state of efficiency consistent with the fuel and the furnace equipment. It will not be disputed that your fireman is able to read a thermometer and tell you how cold or how hot it may be in the boiler room, or that he is competent to use platform scales and weigh your coal. It is not considered that as a preliminary to using the thermometer one must understand the involved mathematics on which the science of thermometry depends or that, as a preliminary to weighing a barrow of coal, one must be able to explain the laws of the lever discovered by Archimedes. You are familiar with scales and thermometers and you go ahead and use them. You are not familiar with draft gages and gas analyzers — hence you believe that a diploma from a technical school is necessary before you can use them.

Every statement and recommendation made by the author has been proved by actual experiment and practice to the satisfaction of many people. Try the methods suggested before you pass adverse judgment upon them.

The author feels called upon to apologize for the frequent use of the pronoun "I" in the pages that follow. The reader must understand that every line of the book has been written right of the writer's personal experiences and in setting these forth the pronoun in the first person has obtruded itself repeatedly.

The author does not claim to be "the law and the prophets" on the subject treated. The reader must take the writer's opinions and experiences for what they are worth upon their face.

Preface. 7

Anecdotes have been liberally used throughout the book for purposes of illustration and in deference to these the author has followed a narrative style of writing which it is hoped may assist in sustaining, the reader's interest until he has finished the book.

Combustion is a dry subject when considered as an abstract proposition. It is not a dry subject when "human interest" is injected into it. It even has its humorous phases.

The author believes that the methods of "spotting" and stopping fuel wastes described in this book are extremely simple. They may not appear so to the reader. It is difficult tc describe a very simple operation to a person who is entirely unacquainted with it and in preparing the book the author has assumed that the reader is not familiar with the subject discussed. It is quite probable that many persons reading the book are better grounded in both the theory and the practice of the matter than the author. To such as these no apology is offered, because the book is not written for them.

The author confesses to the use of rather unvarnished language in some places and he knows that the Manager and Engineer will accept his criticisms with the same good nature in which they are offered.

JOS. W. HAYS.

Michigan City, Indiana, U. S. A., Sept. 1, 1919.

Tlii* liook is devoted entirely to practice. If you are interested in both theory and practice, see page 181.

"Be sure to write about me, honest; whatever you do, do not prettify ine; include all the hells and damns,"

— Walt Whitman.

TO THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS:

This appeal is addressed to you because another fuel limine threatens us. You can avert that famine by prompt and proper action and you can prevent future famines by enforcing the practice of fuel economy in this country. And when you enforce fuel economy you cut down the high cost of living, which, economists say. is at the root of the social

irbances that threaten to engulf us. We believe that you. Mr. President and Congress, should be held personally reosible to our people for any future fuel shortages. We believe this because we know that you can prevent all fuel famines and that you are the only people who can prevent them. It is now up to us to show you why t!

You were quick to recognize that the late world war was a war of machinery, that fuel was necessary to the machinery of production and of transportation. You created the National Fuel Administration as an emergency war measure. Dr. Garfield, an able, honest and truly patriotic man. was placed at the head of the fuel administration and he had the wisdom to surround himself with some of the best Combustion Engineers in the United States. ' He again in his will-

ingness to take the advice of his advisory engineers

It is not our purpose to lay any wreaths upon the grave of the now dead-and-gone Fuel Administration. Rest its soul. It had its troubles. We will let it pass by saying that in our opinion the National Fuel Administration in the brief period of its fretful existence did more to arouse an interest in fuel economy among the consumers of fuel than all of the other agencies combined that have worked toward that end since the day wheD the first savage struck a spark from a flint and discovered fire. This is not hyperbole. We actually believe it. We. with others, drilled away at the public conscience for years, talking and writing about fuel economy, and while we may have made some dents in that adamantine thing we were never able to discover them. The National Fuel Administration in one short, swift operation drilled a nice, clean hole clear through that public conscience. Every sinful fuel waster repented and '"hit the trail" with an enthusiasm that would have delighted the Rev. Billy Sunday. You couldn't see the mourner's bench for the dust that was kicked up in the general stampede.

How was the national Fuel Administration able to bring about such a sudden and universal interest in fuel economy? You had conferred authority upon it by a very appropriate bit of emergency legislation. It was able to say. in effect. "How much fuel are you wasting? You may have the fuel that you require if you will practice real fuel economy but you shall not have a single pound more. Stop wasting fuel or go without fuel." The average fuel waster thinks about fuel waste when he is forced to think about it. When he is not forced to do so he thinks about other things. If the work started by the National Fuel Administration could only be continued there would never be another fuel famine with the sufferings that such a famine entails. The price of fuel would come down and with it the cost of living. There is fuel in almost everything that we eat. drink, wear. use. enjoy and do. There is fuel in the message that you receive over the telephone: in the "near-beer" that you are now drinking while you wish lor the real stuff ilia; you legislated out of existence: in the imitation leather of your so-called shoes; in the grapefruit on your breakfast table, and in the thousand other things that you think are necessary to your daily lives. Fuel is the most important commodity in all the world at the present time. Vv'e wish that we could make you see that.

Stop transportation and a large proportion of our people would starve. Shut down the factories and we should be robbed of other necessities scarcely less essential than food. Stop the supply of fuel and not a wheel would turn either upon the rails or in the factories. No ships could leave our shores. Incidentally we should all freeze. Without fuel the war would have been lost and it is therefore not too much to say that "Fuel won the war."

Nation of wasters that we have been, there is nothing that we have wasted to the extent that we have wasted fuel. The world's supply of mineral fuel cannot be increased or replenished. Every pound that is used or wasted represents a draft upon an account that cannot be replenished by more deposits. About 25 per cent of the fuel used in industrial plants is wasted at the furnace. About 23 per cent is wasted between the furnace and the machine in the factory where the energy is applied. These wastes are preventable and inexcusable. They have nothing to do with other losses that cannot be avoided in the conversion of fuel into applied energy. This 48 per cent of the fuel that we are mining and hauling to our factories to be wasted through ignorance and carelessness, does not belong to us. It is the property of posterity and you are unworthy stewards, MR. PRESIDENT and CONGRESS, if you neglect any means that you may take to conserve our fuel resources. FIND SOME WAY TO PERPETUATE THE WORK OF THE NATIONAL FUEL ADMINISTRATION.

When we undertake to visualize the fuel that is annually wasted in the United States we get a most astonishing picture. Forgetting for the moment that there are other fuels than coal, let us consider coal alone. We are mining coal in the United States at the rate of more than 600,000,000 tons per annum. As already stated, about 48 per cent of our fuel is needlessly wasted. The preventable waste in the boiler room, alone, of the average steam plant is all of 25 per cent. The best engineering authorities in the country agree that this estimate is conservative; that we are away within the actual facts when we assume that a quarter of the coal used in this country for industrial purposes is uselessly wasted at the furnace and boiler. This means that our requirement could easily be met with 75 per cent of the fuel we are now burning. One hundred and fifty million tons of needlessly wasted coal is "quite some considerable" pile of fuel. Loaded upon freight cars, it would make a train more than 28,000 miles long. Imagine such a train completely belting our planet with a lap-over of 3,000 miles, every car of it loaded to the full with coal — with the commodity that is now worth $60.00 a ton and upwards in the countries of some of our former European allies. The preventable waste of fuel in the United States each year easily exceeds the total annual output of all of the Illinois coal fields. What adjective can we use as a qualifier for waste of such magnitude?

MR. PRESIDENT and CONGRESS, you spent incredible sums of money in the work of destruction. We furnished that money gladly and asked very few questions about the ways in which it was expended. We don't know how much you wasted. We do know that if you had come out of your shells a couple of years earlier you could have planned things in a really efficient way. "Haste means waste," always, and you certainly had to hurry after you started. You did in one year what it took Germany 40 years to accomplish, but, Oh, Murder! what it cost us and will cost our grand-children! This book is not the place to discuss the mistakes that were made both before and after our entry into the war. It is the place to discuss a mistake that you are making at this moment. We have mentioned your waste of money because we have a hunch that when the time comes to do something for fuel you will go on one of your periodical sprees of parsimony and refuse to do anything because it will cost something. You are either spending money like a drunken lumberman or squeezing pennies like a miser. Some Congressman is sure to bob up pretty soon and call himself the "watch-dog of the treasury." He will have a numerous following both in and out of Congress and we know that when a bill is presented proposing to do something for fuel it will be opposed because the thing will cost something. It surely will cost our people something if you do not enact and enforce a law to insure the conservation and proper distribution of fuel.

When future fuel famines come let the responsibility for them be placed where it belongs — upon the President and Congress of the United States.

If properly utilized there is fuel enough in the United States to meet our requirements for generations, possibly until science can discover some new means of providing the world with heat, light and power. Important as the problem of conservation may be, it is not of such pressing and immediate importance as the problems of production, of distribution and of cost to the ultimate consumer. If we could save the 150,000,000 of tons or more that we are annually wastingthere would be no coal shortage in the United States and those problems would be settled. The cost of living would go down because fuel enters into practically everything that is necessary to life. MR. PRESIDENT and CONGRESS, it is your business as stewards of our National Wealth to see that fuel is not wasted and that it is so distributed that there shall never be occasion again for want and suffering in our country on account of fuel shortage.

LOOK OX THIS PICTURE.

THE IXFIMTE FUEL WASTE IX THE UNITED STATES.

An Appeal.

AND THEN OX THIS —

SALVAGING AN INFNITESOIAL FRACTION OF THE INFINITE WASTE.

From your scats in a comfortable Pullman you liave seen this picture enacted in more than one icy railroad yard — you have seen an old woman with a shawl over her head, risking: her lire among- the moving trains for a basketful of coal.

»Ir. President and Congress

Unless yon do something*, and do it now, we see a bellylull of trouble ahead of ns for this fall and winter. The country will be wondering about Thanksgiving time what on earth, if anything, it has to be thankful for. Other people see a fuel famine coming. It is your business to see it and to tike steps for its prevention.

The following is quoted from an editorial in a leading daily paper:

COAL TROUBLES AHEAD.

The coal journals are now warning - the public that "concerted action" must be taken if consumers are to be protected from a very great increase in the cost of coal due to the latest demands put forward by the miners. These demands involve a six-hour day and an advance of 40 to 60 per cent in wages. The seriousness of the situation is indicated by the fact that there have already been strikes for the sole purpose of protesting against the miners' own officials, who insist that the present contract, which has something more than a month to run, shall be carried out.

On the part of the operators it is intimated that rather than engage in a protracted struggle with the unions just at a time when the need for coal is beginning to be greatest, they will simply make the best bargain they can with the miners. And as usual, the extra cost will be passed on to the consumer.

The cost will, of course, affect everybody. Coal has become such a fundamental factor in our society that any rise in price is almost immediately reflected in the price of everything else. The landlord of the apartment building is forced to advance the rent; the utility companies, gas, electric light, and traction, ask for higher rates; the railroads must seek higher revenues, and every manufacturing concern has to devise means of increasing its income. In Chicago we have seen the retail price of coal advance from about $8 for anthracite in 1915 to $10, $11, and even $12 in 1918. while bituminous went from $5 to $6.50 in the same period. Last year bituminous was approximately $2.65 at the mine; this year it is $3.10. Now a large percentage of these increases represent the increase in labor cost. Whereas the miner used to get about 84 cents a ton, he now gets $1.45.

And, as we have seen, the miner now wants more money for a shorter day's work. It is no wonder the consumer is asking where this kind of thing is going to stop. In England the British government was recently forced to add 6 shillings ($1.50) to the price of coal, and the financial journals are seriously discussing whether British industry can survive so heavy a burden.

One anwer, in this country at least, is the development of water power. With cheap and plentiful coal the use of steam has in many cases supplanted the use of water power, even where the latter was available. But with coal expensive and scarce it will be obviously to our advantage to develop water power wherever possible. Such a development would, we think, have a wholesome effect on the miners' organizations, which now occupy a strategic position because of the country's dependence on coal.

Of almost equal importance is for the country to learn how to use coal economically. If the total value of the products that have gone up American chimneys in smoke could be computed the amount would be staggering. A more general use of coke and the improvement of methods of coal distillation should be conidered in our efforts to effect a saving.

In the meantime we would suggest that the wise householder will not delay in putting in his winter's supply of coal. The fuel administration has practically relinquished its control and it does not seem likely that the benevolent system of distribution which prevailed last winter will be continued.

How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency.

Chapter I. Why Your Fuel Is Wasted

The purpose of this book is to show WHY, HOW and WHERE fuel is wasted in your boiler room. Having shown the causes of loss specific means of stopping the wastes will be suggested. A diagnosis of the sick man's case will not cure him. There must be a prescription following the diagnosis and the actual taking of the medicine must follow the prescription.

The sickest thing about your factory plant is the boiler room. You have been so busy putting the "prod" into production that you have allowed the boiler room to look after itself in its own way. And the result is exactly what might be expected in such circumstances. You are wasting just about a quarter of your fuel. When I say "you," I am referring to the average steam power plant and when I say "a quarter of your fuel" I am referring to the preventable wastes that occur in the actual burning of the coal. I am not including the necessary heat losses, which are considerable. I am not including the losses chargeable to the boiler proper as distinct from the furnace, such as the great waste due to scale, improper baffling, etc., or the loss due to soot which should be charged jointly to the furnace and boiler. If we add these other wastes to the 25 per cent loss that must be charged against the fireman and the furnace the total will be a staggering figure. I have treated elsewhere* at some length of these "other wastes," and we shall be reasonably occupied in this book if we do justice to the subject of furnace efficiency and allow the boiler for the time being to look after itself. Something will be said about soot and scale but with these exceptions the book will stick to its title, "How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency."

*See the magazine publications of The System Company, Chicago.

Never read a book until you have read the author's preface.

Fuel Wastes Between the Mine and the Machine

Prevent- Non-pre-

able veritable

losses losses

B. T. U. B. T. U.

DIRECT FUEL WASTES

1 Lost — By weather waste between mine

and factory 290,000

2 Lost — In handling- at the plant 290,000

3 Lost — 111 the ash — non-preventable 284,200

4 Lost — In the ash — preventable 1,136.800

5 Lost — By radiation — non-preventable 284,200

6 Lost — By radiation — preventable 852,600

7 Lost — By incomplete combustion 204,908

8 Lost — In chimney to maintain draft —

non-preventable 3,410,400

9 Lost — On account of air leakage in fur-

nace and boiler sitting — preventable. . 2,842,000

LO Lost — On account of air excess drawn

through grates — preventable 2,842,000

li Lost— Due to heating moisture in air and

[NDIRECT FUEL WASTES HEAT ENERGY LOSSES

12 Lost— Due to short circuiting of gases in

gas passages of boiler 322.732

13 Lost — One to soot on heating surfaces. .. . 1,126,561

ii Lost— Due to scale in boiler 1,152,293

15 Lost — Due to incorrect correlation of load it; Lost— One to inability <»r boiler to reduce

temperature of gases below that of the

steam in boiler 1,280,907

i. Lost — Due to leakage of water and steam 216,685

18 Lost Due to friction and radiation in

steam pipes non-preventable 216,68.")

] 9 Lost — One to friction and radiation in

steam pipes— preventable 866,742

20 Lost— With engine exhaust 7,627,331

L'l Lost — l'u<- to cylinder condensation and

radiation 715,063

22 Lost — In friction at engine — non-prevent-

23 Lost- lu friction at engin< — preventable. 59,588

24 Lost — In transmission from engine to

machine — non-preventable 231,000

25 Lost — In transmission from engine to

machine — preventable 231,000

Totals of all losses, preventable and

non-preventable 28.445,972 B. t .u.

Delivered to the machine 554,028 B. t. u.

Received from mine 29,000,000 B. t. u.

Note. — One ton of coal at the mine is assumed to contain 29,000,000 British Thermal Units. The items show where the losses occur and the relative sizes of same in average boiler and engine practice.

Why Your Fuel Is Wasted.

I use the expression "Build Up" because a really constructive process is involved. There is a place to begin, a plan to be pursued and an end to be attained. If you do not start in the proper way at the right place you will never have efficiency in your boiler room. And after you get efficiency if you do not follow the proper method you will not be able to keep it. Your plant will "back-slide," if I may borrow that term from "Billy" Sunday. I wish to make it very clear that it is one thing to "attain" efficiency and quite another thing to "maintain" it.

My statement that a quarter of the coal is needlessly wasted in burning may be challenged by some people. I shall not take it back; I have data covering hundreds of power plants and I can prove it. .It is always dangerous to write a statement which on its face appears improbable. However reasonable your other statements may be the one that sounds extravagant may queer all of them. The reader is asked to accept that estimate of 25 per cent as applying to his own power plant until he has made the investigations suggested in this book and proved to his own satisfaction that his own power plant is an exception to the general rule.

Is one-quarter of your annual coal pile worth saving? It is a waste of good paper to print such a fool question. Of course it is. Every cent that the big pile of fuel represents was skinned from the dividend account. Just figure a moment. One thousand dollars thrown away in your boiler room must be replaced by another thousand earned from your business. That thousand dollars earned means something in volume of orders and volume of output. And if your total coal bill is only four thousand dollars per annum you are a relatively small bore institution. One large factory in Illinois made an actual saving of $73,000 the first year that the methods to be described in this book were employed in its boiler room and that year the plant earned its first profit.

The big industries of the country have made a discovery. They have learned that the profits of the present depend very

"Kindly turn out the lights when leaving the office, we need the current to sell."

Sign in the offices of the West Penn Rys. Co., Connellsville, Pa.

largely upon the practice of economies and that the profits of the future will depend entirely upon such practice. They are going after savings in all departments while many of th|} smaller manufacturers have yet to learn that there is such % word as "economy" in the dictionary. This waking up in tM big industries is one of the reasons why big business is as big as it is and why the big fellows are eating up the little ones. I do not mean to say that all of the big manufacturing industries are really economical in the use of fuel. The majority are extremely wasteful. I do mean to say that the big enterprise is beginning to scrutinize its coal account and supervise its boiler rooms.