Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Frost" to "Fyzabad" / Volume 11, Slice 3

by Various

In the Far East, including Burma and parts of China and Japan, the use of liquid fuel spread rapidly during the years 1899, 1900 and 1901, owing entirely to the development of the Borneo oil-fields by the enterprise of Sir Marcus Samuel and the large British corporation known as the Shell Transport and Trading Company, of which he is the head. This corporation has since amalgamated with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company controlling the extensive wells in Dutch Borneo, and together they supply large quantities of liquid fuel for use in the Far East. In the United States of America liquid fuel is not only used for practically the whole of the manufacturing and locomotive purposes of the state of Texas, but factories in New York, and a still larger number in California, are now discarding the use of coal and adopting petroleum, because it is more economical in its consumption and also more easily handled in transit, and saves nearly all the labour of stoking. So far the supplies for China and Japan have been exported from Borneo, but the discoveries of new oil-fields in California, of a character specially adapted for fuel, have encouraged the belief that it may be possible to supply Chile and Peru and other South American countries, where coal is extremely expensive, with Californian fuel; and it has also found its way across the Pacific to Japan. There are believed to be large deposits in West Africa, but in the meantime the only sources of supply to those parts of Africa where manufacture is progressing, i.e. South Africa and Egypt, are the oil-fields of Borneo and Texas, from which the import has well begun, from Texas to Alexandria via the Mediterranean, and from Borneo to Cape Town via Singapore.

In England, notwithstanding the fact that there exist the finest coal-fields in the world, there has been a surprising development of the use of petroleum as fuel. The Great Eastern railway adapted 120 locomotive engines to its use, and these ran with regularity and success both on express passenger and goods trains until the increase in price due to short supply compelled a return to coal fuel. The London, Brighton & South Coast railway also began the adaptation of some of their locomotive engines, but discontinued the use of liquid fuel from the same cause. Several large firms of contractors and cement manufacturers, chiefly on the banks of the Thames, made the same adaptations which proved mechanically successful, but were not continued when the price of liquid fuel increased with the increased demand.

Fig. 1.—Holden Burner.

The chief factors of economy are the greater calorific value of oil than coal (about 16 ℔ of water per ℔ of oil fuel evaporated from a temperature of 212° F.), not only in laboratory practice, but in actual use on a large scale, and the saving of labour both Economy of liquid fuel. in transit from the source of supply to the place of use and in the act of stoking the furnaces. The use of cranes, hand labour with shovels, wagons and locomotives, horses and carts, is unavoidable for the transit of coal; and labour to trim the coal, to stoke it when under combustion, and to handle the residual ashes, are all indispensable to steam-raising by coal. On the other hand, a system of pipes and pumps, and a limited quantity of skilled labour to manage them, is all that is necessary for the transit and combustion of petroleum fuel; and it is certain that even in England will be found places which, from topographical and other circumstances, will use petroleum more economically than coal as fuel for manufacturing purposes under reasonable conditions of price for the fuel.

Fig. 2.—Rusden and Eeles Burner.

The theoretical calorific value of oil fuel is more nearly realized in practice than the theoretical calorific value of coal, because the facilities for complete combustion, due to the artificial admixture of the air by the atomizing process, are greater in the case of oil than coal, and for this reason, among others, the practical evaporative results are proportionately higher with liquid fuel. In some cases the work done in a steam-engine by 2 tons of coal has been performed by 1 ton of oil fuel, but in others the proportions have been as 3 to 2, and these latter can be safely relied on in practice as a minimum. This saving, combined with the savings of labour and transit already explained, will in the near future make the use of liquid fuel compulsory, except in places so near to coal-fields that the cost of coal becomes sufficiently low to counterbalance the savings in weight of fuel consumed and in labour in handling it. In some locomotives on the Great Eastern railway the consumption of oil and coal for the same development of horse-power was as 17 ℔ oil is to 35 ℔ coal; all, however, did not realize so high a result.

The mechanical apparatus for applying petroleum to steam-raising in locomotives is very simple. The space in the tender usually occupied by coal is closed up by steel-plating closely riveted and tested, so as to form a storage tank. From this tank Liquid fuel in locomotives. a feed-pipe is led to a burner of the combined steam-and-oil type already indicated, and this burner is so arranged as to enter a short distance inside the furnace mouth. The ordinary fire-bars are covered with a thin layer of coal, which starts the ignition in the first place, and the whole apparatus is ready for work. The burner best adapted for locomotive practice is the Holden Burner (fig. 1), which was used on the Great Eastern railway. The steam-pipe is connected at A, the oil-pipe at B, and the hand-wheels C and D are for the adjustment of the internal orifices according to the rate of combustion required. The nozzle E is directed towards the furnace, and the external ring FF, supplied by the small pipe G and the by-pass valve H, projects a series of steam jets into the furnace, independent of the injections of atomized fuel, and so induces an artificial inrush of air for the promotion of combustion. This type of burner has also been tried on stationary boilers and on board ship. It works well, although the great consumption of steam by the supplementary ring is a difficulty at sea, where the water lost by the consumption of steam cannot easily be made up.

Although the application of the new fuel for land and locomotive boilers has already been large, the practice at sea has been far more extensive. The reason is chiefly to be found in the fact that although the sources of supply are at a distance Liquid fuel at sea. from Great Britain, yet they are in countries to whose neighbourhood British steamships regularly trade, and in which British naval squadrons are regularly stationed, so that the advantages of adopting liquid fuel have been more immediate and the economy more direct. The certainty of continuous supply of the fuel and the wide distribution of storage stations have so altered the conditions that the general adoption of the new fuel for marine purposes becomes a matter of urgency for the statesman, the merchant and the engineer. None of these can afford to neglect the new conditions, lest they be noted and acted upon by their competitors. Storage for supply now exists at a number of sea ports: London, Barrow, Southampton, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New Orleans, Savannah, New York, Philadelphia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Madras, Colombo, Suez, Hamburg, Port Arthur, Rangoon, Calcutta, Bombay, Alexandria, Bangkok, Saigon, Penang, Batavia, Surabaya, Amoy, Swatow, Fuchow, Shanghai, Hankow, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki; also in South African and South American ports.

Fig. 3.—Storage of Liquid Fuel on Oil-carrying Steamers (Flannery-Boyd System).

The British admiralty have undertaken experiments with liquid fuel at sea, and at the same time investigations of the possibility of supply from sources within the regions of the British empire. There is an enormous supply of shale under the north-eastern counties of England, but no oil that can be pumped—still less oil with a pressure above it so as to “gush” like the wells in America—and the only sources of liquid supply under the British flag appear to be in Burma and Trinidad. The Borneo fields are not under British control, although developed entirely by British capital. The Italian admiralty have fitted several large warships with boiler apparatus to burn petroleum. The German admiralty are regularly using liquid fuel on the China station. The Dutch navy have fitted coal fuel and liquid fuel furnaces in combination, so that the smaller powers required may be developed by coal alone, and the larger powers by supplementing coal fuel with oil fuel. The speeds of some vessels of the destroyer type have by this means been accelerated nearly two knots.