Automatic home heating from powdered coal is developing as a byproduct of the gas turbine for railroad locomotives recently announced bv the Locomotive Development Committee of Bituminous Coal Research, Inc., and is now coming out of the laboratory for testing as a business venture. If a commercial success, it opens a new vista for clean, simple and smokeless heating without bother to the householder, who would do no handling, shoveling nor ash removing. Waste gases would be vented off through an exhaust pipe or up the chimney. The "push-button" warmth would be regulated by the same thermostatic controls used for oil or gas burners.
This test of commercial practicability of powdered coal for automatic home heating is being undertaken by William B. Rogers of Baltimore, a coal wholesaler of many years' experience and at one time manager of the fuel-oil department of an oil refiner. He has formed a company which is erecting a central plant on a railroad siding for pulverizing bituminous slack in volume.
Initially, the automatic-heating units will be placed in small commercial establishments doing, canning, bottling, dry cleaning, baking and such for serving steam boilers of 75 to 150 hp., using an aggregate of 6000 tons of coal a year.
Thereafter, Mr. Rogers proposes to sell the multi-family and individual home-heating business, as a merchant operating on an annual heating-service contract basis. Although his system is,adaptable to existing furnaces, a special furnace of house-size capacity, a vertical sheet metal cylinder lined with refractory, is to be available. Top-mounting of the powdered-coat burner provides for vertical down-firing after ignition by a gas pilot and sparkplug. A screw conveyor at the bottom of the airtight hopper brings the fluffy black dust to the blower for carburetion into the air stream going into the burner. A small take-off line from the blower gusts secondary air into the flaming chamber for more complete combustion.
Calculated on the basis of a six-family apartment building in Baltimore, Md., the fuel cost of pulverized coal would approximate $315 a year, according to Mr. Rogers. This would be appreciably less than competitive gas and oil fuels. Mr. Rogers also claims that considerable savings would be effected over the hand-fired or stoker-fired coal burners. While installation cost of $500 for the heating unit lookshigh, no janitor is needed and the customer pays nothing directly for maintenance and depreciation. Savings on these should pay for the furnace installation in about three years, Mr. Rogers believes.
R. H. OPPERMANN.