Report on Manure Material ... 203

The Liverpool Colour Market.
West of Scotland Chemicals..
The Tyne Chemical Report

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The Manchester Technical Labora

Tar and Ammonia Products

The Metal Markets

289

Butter Adulteration

289

203 .... 293

..... 2.3 ..... 294

The Liverpool Mineral Market.... 2)4
Patent List
Gazette Notices
New Companies

Imports

Exports

Prices Current.

Notices.

294

295

295 ..... 295 297 300

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Vol. VII.

THE MANCHESTER TECHNICAL LABORATORY.

LECTURES ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS OF POPULAR INTEREST.

ΟΝ

N Tuesday evening last, the second lecture of the series was given by Mr. George E. Davis; the subject being "Domestic Smoke."

The chair was taken by Dr. A. Ransome, chairman of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association, and lecturer on Hygiene at the Owens College, Manchester. There was a good attendance of gentlemen interested in the subject of "Domestic Smoke," including several representatives of the city corporations.

Doctor Ransome said that a sooty atmosphere had an indirect influence on the health of towns by causing housewives to shut their bed-room and other windows against its contaminating effects. Improper ventilation, he believed, produced an excessive amount of consumption. There were abundant proofs that confined air, produced by want of proper ventilation, was one of the chief causes of consumption, and that neglected ventilation was often attributable in large towns to the smoke which pervaded the atmosphere. The Chairman then called upon Mr. Davis to deliver his lecture. DOMESTIC SMOKE.

Mr. Davis said:

"The advanced guard of King Fog occupied our capital yesterday, and travelling at night was accompanied by all the familiar miseries of his reign-a stifling irritating atmosphere, trains all at sixes and sevens, fires along the line, and a cannonade of signals under one's carriage. It seems earlier than usual for this sort of thing, and I heard say it is due to the 'anticyclone.' It is a pity the anti-cyclone' cannot be induced to move on."

This is how the coal-burning season has been heralded in by the London correspondent of one of our evening papers. Two days later we read:

"The dense fog which hung over London during the last two days has happily disappeared and been succeeded by a mild west wind, bringing rain. Yesterday evening the fog was very bad, and over a large part of the metropolis omnibus and tramcar traffic was entirely suspended, while the drivers of hansoms and other vehicles were in many cases obliged to disinount and lead their horses."

A pretty spectacle indeed of the scientific attainments and boasted civilization of the 19th century. But let us read further, for even if our municipal authorities, together with ourselves as individuals, have so far forgotten our duty to each other, the smoke question has, for many years, never been neglected by the public press.

The rather dense fog which prevailed in London during the first two days of the past week worked an enormous amount of mischief, for the death-rate, which was 174 for the week previous, rose to 20'5 for last week, the average of the immediately preceding five weeks being 16.8. In plain figures, the number of deaths last week showed an increase of 269 on the week before, and of 339 on the average of five weeks. A single day's fog, therefore, may mean the loss of 170 lives. "More than a battle counts its slain." Against such a deadly enemy, carrying out its fatal mission so silently

and surely, it becomes as imperative a duty on health authorities to combat as it is to attend to drainage and other sanitary arrangements.

A correspondent of the Manchester Examiner and Times, in July last, wrote:—

"When wood gave place to coal as fuel the element smoke was introduced at the same time, and the production of coal, consumed in this country alone, gradually increasing from comparatively a few tons in the year now amounts to upwards of 150 millions of tons annually, and has now brought us face to face with an evil which the Duke of Albany decribed as one too grievous to be borne, and for which a remedy must be found.' In London alone, every morning, some four millions of chimneys commence to pour out smoke, which, passing upwards, forms the smoke cloud hanging over the metropolis. Town smoke includes all that combination of gas and fume which contaminates the air of towns-that which makes the difference between town air and country air. A country visitor to a large town cannot fail to be struck with the contrast thus presented to him; instead of the clear, bracing air which he breathed in the country, he now breathes in a dense atmosphere, oppressive in its action and uncleanly in its effect. The results are everywhere manifest, on the buildings and the people.

"During the fogs of the winter of 1880, the mortality in London rose to 40 per cent. higher than any rate since the last cholera epidemic. This mortality did not extend to the provinces, and the excess was almost wholly due to diseases of the respiratory organs. In the effect of smoke on the Houses of Parliament, we have the direct testimony of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, M. P., who tells us that the cost of preparing the exterior of the building, owing to the destruction of the beautiful carved work, amounts to £2,500. annually.

"Air polluted with smoke is the cause of many evils. It injuriously affects the health and comfort of the community, destroys public buildings, deteriorates perishable fabrics, injures horticul ture and vegetation generally, and entails in various ways unnecessary expenditure, whilst smoke, in combination with fog, diminishes vitality, and there is ample testimony to the fatal influence of smoke-laden fogs. Carbon in a fine state of division enters the tissues, and has the effect of blocking up the pores, producing a coat of carbon overlaying the tissues. 'It is found in the post-mortem rooms in metropolitan hospitals,' says Mr. Romanes, that the lungs of patients are overspread with a black layer of carbon, and we are not able to sponge the lungs of people during life, as we can sponge the leaves of plants.'

I do not believe that the knowledge of the evils attributable to coal smoke is as widely disseminated as it should be. Directly that the winter fogs make their appearance, the public is up in arms, protesting against the emanations, imaginary and real, from the chimneys of neighbouring manufactories, but I think I am correct in saying that not one householder in ten thousand thinks for a moment that he is a contributor to the smoke and fog-producing process. The sooner that the householder understands the real bearings of this question, the nearer we shall be to the time when socalled "fogs" will be numbered amongst the things of the past.

Householders have to thank themselves, and themselves entirely, for the fogs under which we are continually suffering. In a paper read in this city over eight years ago, I stated my belief that if we were to banish all the factories for ten miles round, we should have the so-called fogs quite as intense as ever. I further stated that "if we wish to clear the atmos. phere our first difficulty is with domestic chimneys."

The views then expressed may be repeated, with emphasis, to-night. I do not however believe that the average householder imagines for a moment that he does any harm by sending the products of the combustion of coal into the open air. If he has a thought upon the subject, he probably consoles himself with the idea that the amount of his contribution is so small as to be inappreciable. Let him not lay such a flattering unction to his soul; multiply the individual contribution by four millions, and you get a London "fog," and by three-quarters of a million, and you produce a Manchester "fog."

The question of smoke-burning is not so easy as it appears at first sight. During the past twenty years I have visited most, if not all, the public exhibitions of appliances having this object in view, and when I held the position of Government Inspector of Chemical Works I was invited to many private trials of stoves and other apparatus for the prevention

of smoke. As the outcome of my experience I may say that I have not yet seen one single appliance which will yield a smokeless chimney with a house fire under all conditions, and more often than not I have seen a so-called smokeless grate sending off more smoke than an ordinary one.

In order to successfully combat the evils of smoke, we must deal with the subject systematically. I must show you how smoke is produced, of what its component parts consist, and thirdly, how it may be avoided.

Let us cast our imaginations back to the days, when Eschylus in one of the most severely chaste of human com. positions, immortalized the Greek conception of the origin of fire, a symbol of the fate of those who were destined to become the greatest benefactors of humanity.

Wood was burned in a large bowl supported on a tripod, and the sinoke was allowed to escape from the apartment as best it might. Of course various expedients were adopted to minimise the evils of smoke in the various apartments, the poor had to suffer the grossest inconveniences (for there were no chimneys in those days), while the rich burned hard and fragrant woods, and even spices, doing as we are apt to do now-a-days in sanitary matters, hiding one odour by another more pungent, instead of endeavouring to remove the cause of it altogether.

Gradually wood gave way to charcoal, which was burned in an open brazier, and here it may be mentioned that at as late a period as the end of the last century our English House of Commons was heated by charcoal, burned in an open

brazier.

We have not, however, to deal to-night with any but the popular fuel, COAL, but I have introduced the subject of wood and charcoal to help us later on and to serve as an apology for the introduction of chimneys. The organisation that was proof against wood-smoke quailed before the volatile spirit of its black brother.

The introduction of stone-coal in the place of charcoal and wood met with much opposition, and on reference to Parliamentary annals we find that a proclamation was issued in the reign of Edward I., and another in the time of Elizabeth, prohibiting the use of stone-coal in London during the sitting of Parliament, lest the health of the knights of the shire should suffer during their sojourn in the metropolis.

Thus early were the evils of coal smoke recognised, and we have gone on submitting to the almost intolerable nuisance for nearly two hundred and forty years. About the year 1648 the citizens of London, aware of the damage that coal smoke was doing them, petitioned Parliament against the use of stone-coal from Newcastle, the use of which in those days could not have occasioned one ten-thousandth part of the evil existing amongst us to-day.

Evelyn, the author of "Sylvia," in 1661, in a work addressed to King Charles II., describes coal smoke in the following words:

"This is that pernicious smoke which sullies all her glory, super-inducing a sooty crust or fur upon all that it lights, spoiling the movables, tarnishing the plate gildings and furniture, and corroding the very iron bars and hardest stones with those piercing and acrimonious spirits which accompany its sulphur, and executing more in one year than to the pure air of the country it could effect in some hundreds. It kills our bees and flowers abroad, suffering nothing in our gardens to bud, display themselves, or ripen, and it was by many observed that in the year when Newcastle was besieged and blocked-up in our late wars so as through the great dearth and scarcity of coals these fumous works, many of them were either left off, or spent but few coals in comparison to what they now use; gardens and orchards planted even in the heart of London were observed to bear such infinite qualities of fruit as they never produced the like either before or since, to their great astonishment; but it was by the owners rightly imputed to the penury of coals and the little smoke which they took notice to infect them in that year."

Gentlemen, I ask you to weigh well the words of Evelyn just read to you, and to put the question to yourselves, whether we are any better off, so far as the smoke nuisance is concerned, than they were in those days; whether we have each, individually, done all we can to mitigate the nuisance.

Let us now see how smoke is produced. When coal is used as fuel for ordinary house fires, only a portion of it will undergo complete combustion. If the coal was pure carbon, the burning of it if thoroughly accomplished, would result in the formation of carbonic acid a colourless gas, which, in proper quantity in the atmosphere, is not injurious.

Nature has provided us with a remedy against the overproduction of carbonic acid. The flowering plants, the trees and shrubs all require carbonic acid for their existence, and provided they could obtain such food, free from admixture with acid vapours, they would thrive upon it and not die until their life-cycle was completed. But coal is not pure carbon. It usually contains:

When such coal is used for fuel, a large quantity of smoke is emitted when the fire is first lighted, and also, when every subsequent charge of raw coal is placed upon the fire, smoke of more or less intensity is produced. It is the combination of these two smokes that produces our so-called fogs, the manufacturers' smoke has but little to do with them.

This smoke consists of particles of carbon vapours of hydrocarbons, similar in kind to paraffin oils, sulphuretted hydrogen, sulphurous acid and other not very savoury bodies. This mixture all escapes into the chimney, and is usually defined "smoke," which finding its way into a damp, still atmosphere, produces what we have been pleased to call "fog." If anyone wishes to see which class of chimneys really causes the nuisance, let him perambulate the lower parts of Manchester and Salford, or in fact any large town, between the hours of five and seven on any cold winter morning. At this time householders are lighting their fires and everything is cold-grate, chimney, air, all are cold and in splendid order for the production of the Maximum of smoke.

An American expert writes of the London atmosphere as follows:

"The vast amount of coal consumed for domestic purposes accounts for the only difficulty they have in clearing the atmosphere, for in London, smoke from factory chimneys is practically prevented, while from those in Paris volumes of smoke, rivalling Cincinnatti, are constantly emitted, yet the London atmosphere is smoky while that of Paris is clear. In London vast quantities of bituminous coal are consumed for domestic purposes, in Paris, none. We must therefore conclude that the difference in the atmosphere of the two capitals is due to a difference in domestic conditions."

The first problem to solve by those who essay to produce a smokeless grate, is that of showing us how to light a fire without producing smoke. Let us now see the effect of placing raw coal on to a moderately hot fire.

You will now see the difficulties we have to contend with; once get the householder to recognise the fact that most morning fogs are caused by the smoke of first-lighted fires, which the damp still air will not carry away, and we may hope to see the last of them; but even then the immense damage to vegetation in and around our towns, caused by the sulphurous acid from coal-smoke will not be reduced one jot.

We have not to go far to observe the effect of acid gases on vegetation. We need not go to Widnes or St. Helens for specimens of trees or shrubs killed by smoke and its accompanying gases. A walk up the Bury New Road shows us the exact spot where grass ceases to grow, and the few specimens of trees in the gardens testify to the deadly atmosphere in which the inhabitants are bound to live. An old inhabitant of Manchester has informed me that he used to walk on the river bank from Ancoats to Chorlton-on-Medlock and gather primroses, and remembers the time when a luxuriant row of trees fronted the roadway at All Saints'. Is there no chance of our ever seeing trees growing again in our public squares?

Tree planting has been of late years much indulged in, in and around Manchester, but the vile atmosphere will not allow them to live, let alone to flourish. The only way to get trees to grow is to purify the atmosphere, and then perhaps, when trees will grow, life generally will be more enjoyable.

As I have tried to point out to you the sulphurous acid of coal-smoke falls to the ground in the fogs and rain, and renders the ground so acid that nothing will grow, a zone appearing where ever the grass is destroyed.

The sulphur of the coal burns as I have already stated to sulphurous acid, and produces the same chemical compound, as by burning sulphur in oxygen. In order to impress upon you the destructive nature of the substance, I have arranged a few experiments.

The gas in the flask is sulphurous acid, and is one of the component parts of smoke as I have already explained. Coal usually contains about 8 pounds of sulphur in every thousund, which on combustion escapes as sulphurous acid, so that the 130 millions of tons consumed annually in Great Britain produce about three millions of tons of oil of vitriol, which is showered down over the surface of this little island every year, killing flowers, grass, and trees in our towns and suburbs, and destroying human life in proportion "More than a battle counts its slain."

The evil lies with this invisible sulphurous acid. I will show you its action on certain colours.

In order to show you that this acid is the same as that produced from the combustion of coal, coke, or even gas, I have arranged the next experiment. In my last lecture on manufacturing smoke I showed the action of sulphurous acid on a variety of organic colours, I am now going to burn a piece of very sulphurous coal, and show you the effect of a solution of the gas upon similar colours, in order to show you the damage likely to ensue from the sulphurous acid of coal-smoke.

Not only does the sulphurous acid affect colours, but by the absorption of atmospheric oxygen it becomes converted into sulphuric acid or oil of vitriol which permeates everywhere and does an immense amount of damage. Textile goods are tendered, made rotten and destroyed by continued exposure in shop windows where gas is burning. People say "the gas has made them rotten," whereas it would be more correct to say-" the sulphurous acid has made them rotten."

I have here two pieces of cotton, which I will strain by means of equal weight: one of them has been treated with the products of combustion of the Salford gas and dried, while the other remains untreated. You see that the treated piece has given way; it was, in fact, rotten.

I can give you another very good illustration of the action of the sulphuric acid arising from products of combustion upon cellulose materials.

The Salford gas has been burning here for some hours. I have the apparatus so arranged that the sulphurous acid produced, is arrested in the form of sulphuric acid. The solution is here. I will paint a sheet of paper with it, and dry it, showing you the result. As the solution dries, the acid becomes strong enough to char the paper, and to destroy it. It is the sulphur impurity which does this, carbon and carbonic acid will not do any such thing.

Coal smoke, then, produces about three millions of tons per annum of oil of vitriol, most of which is showered down

upon us in the rain. This has certainly been going on in

this proportion for the past twenty years, so that during this period we may estimate that over sixty millions of tons of oil of vitriol have fallen over the surface of the British Isles.

SIXTY MILLION TONS! Now let us form some idea of this quantity. There are many users of oil of vitriol in Manchester, and nearly the whole of it is made in the Bradford district. From the works there to the user's factory, a horse and man will be able to make three journeys a day with eighteen carboys each journey. From these data we shall find that to move this quantity of acid to a distance of two miles would require 3,700 horses and men, working every day for a year. To put it in another way-suppose a canal was cut in the soil, of a uniform width of twenty feet, what would its length have to be to hold the twenty years' production of sulphuric acid resulting from the use of coal as a fuel? Το our astonishment we find that if the said canal was five feet

deep, its length would have to be more than 2,200 miles; or, in other words, a canal, twenty feet in width, five feet in depth, and 110 miles in length, would have to be provided each year, to hold all the strong sulphuric acid that would be produced from the combustion of the coal used in Eng. land. This quantity exceeds, by far, the whole of the vitriol specially manufactured in the British Isles.

We may now consider how the evils of smoke may be avoided, and I may at once say that I do not know of any practical method whereby the sulphurous acid can be satisfactory extracted from household smoke, when once the sulphur has been gasified. But the evolution of sulphurous compounds from fuel can be stayed during the process of combustion by a proper preparation of the fuel. Five per cent. of lime or chalk, added to slack or dross, consolidated with pitch and pressed into blocks, such as are now known as patent fuel, will prevent the evolution of the sulphurous elements. There is also a patent fuel in the market, consolidated by the use of silicate of soda, which will not give off sulphurous acid when burned. I have some of it here, and will place it on the fire for you to see.

Of course, such fuel would be a trifle more expensive than ordinary coal, but not much more, and we must consider that some sacrifice will have to be made by householders if we are to have a purer atmosphere. When the bulk of our towns have increased in size, when to use the Duke of Albany's words the evil has become "too grievous to be borne," when through inability to support themselves on smoke-begrimed farms, the agricultural population have swarmed the towns, then it may begin to dawn upon some of us, that it would be better to pay a higher price for our fuel, than to permit the depopulation of our residential suburbs and the depreciation of property occasioned thereby.

If the smoke evil continues, rents will continue to go down, while town rates will rise, and all those who can afford to live away will do so, but if the smoke and invisible sulphurous acid could be suppressed, town residences would be once more in request, suburban rents would rise, and our towns receive such a lease of prosperity that has never been known before.

Is not this an ideal, worthy of our utmost efforts?

Is not such an anticipation worth a little self-sacrifice on our part?

Let us now turn to the visible portion of the smoke. There are still the two conditions to deal with that I have already mentioned: (1) the smoke produced in lighting the fires and (2) that produced each time a new charge of coal is placed upon the remnants of the previous fuel.

For the first condition I do not know of any adequate remedy; to prevent smoke during the lighting up period would be very difficult, but it can be minimised in several ways. One method is to light the fire at the top, to which objection may be taken on the ground that it takes such a long time to burn through. Another method is to light the fire with gas-coke, using a blower for the time to increase the draught; while a third method is to minimise the number of lightings during the coal-burning season.

The second condition-that of preventing smoke when fresh fuel is put on to a fire-has been attended to for nearly a century.

Has it ever struck any of you, that in attending to an ordinary fire we operate in a direct contrary manner to burning a candle. Dr. Franklin in 1745 wanted householders to burn coal in their fires in the same manner as a candle burns, the cold fuel being below the burning portion. Nobody, however, looked upon Dr. Franklin's fire-cage as anything but a curiosity. In 1815 John Cutler obtained letters patent for a fireplace in which the coal was fed in below. Many grates were introduced on this pattern, but a firm of competitors questioned the validity of the patent on the pretence that the bottom of a kitchen range had previously been made to rise and fall; whereupon the law gave a decision against Cutler, who at once abandoned the matter in disgust. After this we have had Spencer's fire-cage and the Atkins and Marriott smoke-consuming grate, which embody all that has been done in more recent years. In fact, as early as 1816 it was foreseen

that these special appliances, being out of the usual pattern and costly, could never meet with universal introduction. Dawson and Hawkins in that year patented a shovel for feeding in the raw coal beneath the glowing portion, and, I believe, this has been re-patented several times during the past 25 years. Dr. Arnott in 1854 took Cutler's grate as his standard. He improved it, and many were made of the new pattern; but servants had to be instructed, and hence the failure to introduce them. We may pass by the fire-places of Rumford, Jeakes, Marsh, Hoole, Young, Goodchild, and Taylornames perhaps now forgotten by the modern race of fire-place inventors-with the exhortation to study what these men have done. All these schemes, even up to the present day, have not succeeded in turning a current of public feeling in favour of smokeless grates.

A single evening is too short a time for me to go into all the points that might be raised on this great question, but before I conclude, there are two aspects of the matter that deserve to be kept well before us. Smoke can be prevented by using a smokeless fuel, and any substantial nuisance may be prevented by the use of gaseous fuel, even the nuisance and injury arising from sulphurous acid. For household purposes, smokeless fuel may be particularised as anthracite coal, gas-coke and certain kinds of patent fuel, and there are three methods of burning it. Either of these fuels may be burned in the ordinary open fire-place, without the slightest trouble. In this very building to-night you will have an opportunity of seeing how easy it is to avoid smoke. In the exhibition we have a slow combustion stove that requires lighting but once in the season. The room you are now in can be heated in the same manner. In our offices you may be shown ordinary grates burning gas-coke, while a gas-fire in one office shows the care we have to take not to pollute the Manchester and Salford atmosphere. Slow combustion stoves of good pattern are the cheapest modes of heating and produce less smoke pollution than any other system I know of.

Slow combustion stoves do not enable us, however, to completely overcome the sulphurous acid nuisance and damage, nevertheless it greatly reduces the evil, as much less fuel is consumed to produce the same heating effect.

Practically, the whole of the nuisance now arising from the combustion of coal, could be stopped by the general use of coal-gas for cooking and heating. And here we may enquire what have our two great gas manufacturers, the sister corporations done to extend the use of coal-gas? Absolutely nothing! Worse still, the application of coal-gas, for purposes other than lighting, has increased in spite of the manufacturers of it. When coal-gas was only used for lighting, that is when the mains were only used at night, there was some excuse for keeping the day pressure low, but since the introduction of cooking by gas engines, warming offices by means of gas-stoves and other similar uses for the agent, the day consumption should be more carefully sought after and fostered. If the gas undertakings of the sister towns had been in the hands of private companies, the price of gas would by this time have been lowered to such an extent as to have allowed of a much more general use for heating purposes. Heating apartments by means of gas, even at 2s. per thousand feet, is still much more expensive than coal or coke, and thus a universal introduction of gaseous fuel is retarded.

I believe that if a company was formed to supply a heating gas (ordinary coal-gas) to Manchester and Salford at Is. per thousand cubic feet, it would be a grand commercial success, but even though such a scheme could for ever free us from our smoke and fogs, I venture to prophesy that the fiercest opponent, the promoters would have to encounter, would be the corporations of these two places. The gas supply is now in their hands; encouragement should be given to keep the mains more fully worked during the day, whereby the gas profits would be increased and the atmosphere purified, to the benefit of all the inhabitants.

A discussion followed the reading of the paper, in which Mr. Alderman Bowes, of Salford, Mr. Councillor Worthington, of Manchester, Mr. Harry Grimshaw, Mr. Samuel Mellor, Mr. Forbes Carpenter, and Mr. William Thomson took part. A vote of thanks to the chairman terminated the proceedings.