Evidence is cropping up all around us that tends to this change. We find manufacturers of fireclay goods now making carbons for electric lighting; we also find gas fixture manufacturers now making and selling electric wires of all kinds, besides other apparatus connected with the electrical field. Manufacturers of meters have not yet devised a meter for measuring electrical currents, but perhaps it would pay them to devote a portion of their time to studying one out. As far as the present meter business is concerned, I think, if this transformation of the gas business is brought about, the demand for gas meters would be quadrupled and the use of the larger sizes of meters would be made necessary; but if accuracy could be insured with a much smaller meter with quicker action, I think it would be better adapted for the purpose. Fuel gas, if it can be manufactured at a price at which it could be sold with profit at a lower or as low price as coal, would prove a larger field than all the kinds of lighting put together, and is certainly worth our while to
investigate thoroughly. The owners of the smallest houses of our cities would become our patrons, and a small profit per thousand would represent a wide margin when taking into consideration the large amount that would be consumed.
But is the fuel gas practical, and has there been sufficient progress made to date to warrant gas companies taking hold of it with any assurance of success?
In the first place, what assurance do we require? Do we want some one to come along and guarantee us a profit of 20 per cent. on our investment if we enter the field? If so, the patentees of the different processes might just as well negotiate with the shoe maker as with the gas company. I think all the assurance we want in the premises is that with certain apparatus we can get certain results from a ton of coal (the kind of coal being specified), or that from a ton of coal we can get a certain amount of available deliverable heat units.
The balance we should be capable of working out ourselves, such as labor, leakage, cost of gas at consumers' meters, and such other data that we certainly should be more familiar with than any one else.
Of course, the fuel gas will have to have an odor, and must be delivered at a proper pressure; and proper appliances for governing supply and insuring perfect safety will have to be calculated on. In fact, the gas man must try to improve on methods adopted, and do his best to hasten the day when solid fuel in our homes shall be no more—in other words, we have to take hold of the fuel gas business in its infancy or it will get weaned away from us.
Mr. McMillin, with others, has given us some figures on fuel gas which have been verified by practical tests. For instance, he gives us as his opinion that a mixed gas is more adapted for all-round purposes than either coal or water gas alone.
From experiments made we find that from a ton of bituminous coal, making a mixed gas, we can realize as salable gas 63 or 64 per cent. of the total heat units in the original ton of coal, or about 17,000,000 heat units, besides a residue of heat sufficient to produce the steam for making the above amount.
Of this mixture 20 per cent. is coal gas, made in the ordinary way, which is the only objectionable feature the writer can see in the process. I am inclined to think that Mr. McMillin rather strained a point here in order not to alarm coal gas men, or else to avoid a too radical change in the apparatus now in vogue for making coal gas.
By his statement we find that in water gas, labor and repairs cost but 7 cents per M, while coal gas costs for the same items 15 cents per M. Of course, the proportion of coal gas made by the old method is of more value in heat units than the water gas made by the new method; but what I wished to suggest was this, that if the whole process be made in the cupola as water gas is now made, whether the result would be the same number, or nearly so, of heat units in amount of gas made, with a large reduction in labor making the coal gas cost no more than the water gas for the item of labor repairs. If the mixture can be made in this manner, and I have some assurance that it can be done successfully, then I think it would pay any company to abandon the use of the present style of gas benches, and use the space now occupied by them with more improved apparatus, rather than use them at a loss, simply because we have them on hand.