Steam and Gas Engines Compared.
During 1904 and 1905 the U. S. Geological Survey compared at St. Louis a steam engine with a gas engine, each of 250 horse-power, using 24 varieties of lignites and bituminous coals. The steam engine was of a simple, non-condensing, unjacketed Corliss type, from the Allis-Chalmers Company, Milwaukee. The gas engine was a three-cylinder, vertical model from the Westinghouse Machine Company, Pittsburg. Its gas was supplied by a Taylor gas producer furnished by R. D. Wood & Company, Philadelphia, of the design illustrated on page 460.
The official report in three parts, fully illustrated, presenting the tests in detail, was published by the Survey early in 1906. On page 978, of the second part, 14 comparative tests are summarized. They show that in the gas plant on an average 1.70 pounds of fuel were consumed in producing for one hour one electrical horse-power; in the steam plant the consumption was 4.29 pounds, two and a half times as much. With apparatus adapted to a particular fuel, with larger and more economical engines, better results would have been shown both by steam and gas. Yet competent critics believe that the ratio of net results would have remained much the same. The most important fact brought out in the tests is that some fuels, lignites from North Dakota for example, have little worth in raising steam, and high value in producing gas; their moisture is a detriment under a boiler, it is an advantage in a gas producer. The cost of this investigation is likely to be repaid many thousand-fold in pointing out the best way to use fuels which abound in the Western and Northwestern States and in Canada. See [note], page 241.