Anthracites of newer, tertiary or cretaceous age, are found in the Crow’s Nest part of the Rocky Mountains in Canada, and at various points in the Andes in Peru.
The principal use of anthracite is as a smokeless fuel. In the eastern United States, it is largely employed as domestic fuel, usually in close stoves or furnaces, as well as for steam purposes, since, unlike that from South Wales, it does not decrepitate when heated, or at least not to the same extent. For proper use, however, it is necessary that the fuel should be supplied in pieces as nearly uniform in size as possible, a condition that has led to the development of the breaker which is so characteristic a feature in American anthracite mining (see [Coal]). The large coal as raised from the mine is passed through breakers with toothed rolls to reduce the lumps to smaller pieces, which are separated into different sizes by a system of graduated sieves, placed in descending order. Each size can be perfectly well burnt alone on an appropriate grate, if kept free from larger or smaller admixtures. The common American classification is as follows:—
Lump, steamboat, egg and stove coals, the latter in two or three sizes, all three being above 1½ in. size on round-hole screens.
| Chestnut | below 1½ inch | above 7⁄8 inch. |
| Pea | ” 7⁄8 ” | ” 9⁄16 ” |
| Buckwheat | ” 9⁄16 ” | ” 3⁄8 ” |
| Rice | ” 3⁄8 ” | ” 3⁄16 ” |
| Barley | ” 3⁄16 ” | ” 3⁄32 ” |
From the pea size downwards the principal use is for steam purposes. In South Wales a less elaborate classification is adopted; but great care is exercised in hand-picking and cleaning the coal from included particles of pyrites in the higher qualities known as best malting coals, which are used for kiln-drying malt and hops.
Formerly, anthracite was largely used, both in America and South Wales, as blast-furnace fuel for iron smelting, but for this purpose it has been largely superseded by coke in the former country and entirely in the latter. An important application has, however, been developed in the extended use of internal combustion motors driven by the so-called “mixed,” “poor,” “semi-water” or “Dowson gas” produced by the gasification of anthracite with air and a small proportion of steam. This is probably the most economical method of obtaining power known; with an engine as small as 15 horse-power the expenditure of fuel is at the rate of only 1 ℔ per horse-power hour, and with larger engines it is proportionately less. Large quantities of anthracite for power purposes are now exported from South Wales to France, Switzerland and parts of Germany.
(H. B.)
ANTHRACOTHERIUM (“coal-animal,” so called from the fact of the remains first described having been obtained from the Tertiary lignite-beds of Europe), a genus of extinct artiodactyle ungulate mammals, characterized by having 44 teeth, with five semi-crescentic cusps on the crowns of the upper molars. In many respects, especially the form of the lower jaw, Anthracotherium, which is of Oligocene and Miocene age in Europe, and typifies the family Anthracotheriidae, is allied to the hippopotamus, of which it is probably an ancestral form. The European A. magnum was as large as the last-mentioned animal, but there were several smaller species and the genus also occurs in Egypt, India and North America. (See [Artiodactyla].)