Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

by Mary Huston Gregory

Electricity is another form of light and power which involves a large waste of the energy of coal; only one-fifth of one per cent., that is, one-five hundredth of the value of the coal is used in electricity, and there is at present no known remedy for this.

There are methods, however, of lessening even this waste, and these are constantly receiving more attention. One is for the electric plants located in cities to sell their exhaust steam or water heated by the coal as it is converted into electric power, as a by-product. The electric power-house thus becomes a central heating plant to supply stores, offices, and residences. Another system being tried abroad, though scarcely past the experimental stage in this country, establishes great electric power-houses at the coal mines to use the culm, low-grade slack, and lignites, the lowest form of coal, in short, all the waste of the mines. Still another plan is the manufacturing of electricity by water-power, as we have seen in a previous chapter.

The manufacturing industries of the country waste a large amount of fuel annually, but here the waste is mostly due to expensive methods of producing power, and to careless stoking, and is largely preventable. As we have shown, gas-engines are a far more economical form of producing power than are steam-engines. Steam uses from five to ten per cent. of the heat-units of coal, gas-producer engines use fifty per cent. and burn a lower grade of coal.

One of the great problems of cities is the heavy volume of bituminous or soft coal smoke that hangs over the entire surrounding region, levying a heavy tax in cleaning and laundry work, making the air difficult to breathe, and shutting out the daylight itself. Every residence adds its mite, but the factories and public buildings are the worst offenders. There are several good smoke-consuming devices on the market that have been thoroughly tested by the government, which will furnish their names on application.

If factory owners who use steam power could realize that the gases, the highest heat-producing part of the coal, escape with the smoke, and that by using smoke consumers they not only prevent all the evils of the smoke nuisance but save fully half of the value of their coal, they would gladly put in this equipment. What manufacturer would not eagerly welcome any device that would cut his fuel bills in half?

The other cause of waste of coal in the manufacturing industries is recklessness in the use of fuel, filling the furnaces with the drafts so disposed that much of the heat is wasted. Every factory owner should learn (from the government reports if he has no other means of learning) the best methods of firing furnaces, and should employ them in his factory.

The last great waste of coal is in households. In stoves and furnaces, and to a certain extent in kitchen ranges, this waste is through carelessness in firing, as it is in factories. There still remains a large amount of wasted energy in cooking that is unavoidable. The amount of coal consumed before certain articles can be cooked, the heat remaining after the meal is prepared, are wastes that it seems impossible to prevent, though wise management will prevent undue waste even here. Fireless cookers, an invention of recent years, go far toward solving the problem of waste by long hours of cooking single articles, and each year we see more prepared food bought in order to save the cost of heat. Housekeepers find that it does not pay to bake their bread themselves, since a dozen loaves can be baked in a large oven with the fuel used in baking one at home.

Briquettes are a new form of fuel made from coal, principally for household use. They are made from the low-grade coals, culm, slack and lignites, blended with coal-tar pitch. They are commonly used not only in households, but for locomotives and ships, in several European countries, especially Germany; but in this country the cost of making them—about a dollar per ton—makes the retail price higher than the cheaper grades of coal, and their general introduction at the price of the higher grades is rather slow.

Let it always be kept in mind that we must not check the careful use, only the waste, and the best way to avoid an unnecessary drain on the coal and at the same time increase our manufactures is to substitute other power. Coal is only a form of energy that came originally from the sun. The same causes that produced coal still exist. Scientists tell us that coal is still being made, but it will take thousands of years to perfect it. If we could only learn to take the sun's heat directly and use it for our heat, light, and power, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the world, greater even than the discovery of electricity.

Many attempts have been made to produce power directly from the sun through solar engines, or by concentrating it in furnaces. At the St. Louis Exposition a few years ago, a Portuguese priest exhibited a solar engine called a heliophore, in which, by means of the sun's rays, the temperature was raised to 6000 degrees F., and a cube of iron placed in it melted like a snowball. The sun helps to raise the tides and some day they may be used to produce power. Many experiments are being made with both solar and tidal energy, some of them successful in a small way, but nothing that is ready to stand the test of every-day use has been devised.