BURNING BRICK WITH CRUDE OIL FUEL.

At the present time there is not the least reason why either wood, coal, or any other solid fuel should be used for the burning of brick. This style of burning brick belongs to a past age. The art of brickmaking has made tremendous progress during the past quarter of a century. It is no longer the art of the ignorant; brains, capital, experience, science, wide and general knowledge, must in these days be the property of the successful brick manufacturer. There are some such progressive brick manufacturers in Chicago, who use neither coal nor wood in the drying or burning of their clay products. Crude oil is the fuel which they employ, and with this fuel they obtain cheaper and better brick than do manufacturers who employ solid fuel. Some of these manufacturers have expressed themselves as preferring to quit the brick business rather than return to the use of wood or coal as fuel in brick burning.

This shows plainly that progress in our art, when it does come, comes to remain. It is true that crude oil for brick-burning purposes is not everywhere obtainable. But there is a fuel which is even better than crude oil, namely, fuel gas, and which can be produced and employed on any brick yard at a saving of seventy-five per cent. over coal or other solid fuel.

The Rose process for making fuel gas gives a water gas enriched by petroleum. Roughly, about half the cost of this gas as made at Bellefonte, Pa., was for oil. The gas cost 6.68c. per 1,000 cu. ft., with oil at 2¼c. a gallon. At double this price the gas would cost but 10c., and show that in practice, foot for foot, it equals natural gas.

Fuel gas means a larger investment of capital than does any of the other modes of brick burning, and is, therefore, not within the reach of the entire trade. The cost of appliances for burning brick with crude oil is not very large, and as all grate bars, iron frames, and doors can be dispensed with in the use of crude oil fuel, the cost of an oil-burning equipment is but little in excess of an equipment of grates, etc., for coal-burning kilns.

At works using small amounts of fuel, especially if cost of fuel bears but a small proportion to total cost of the manufactured product, oil will be in the future very largely used. It is clean, as compared with coal, can be easily handled, and when carefully used in small quantities, is safe. There are several methods of burning oil that are well adapted to the use of brick manufacturers and other fuel consumers.

The Pennsylvania Railroad made some very thorough experiments on the use of petroleum in their locomotives, and while the results obtained are reported to have been satisfactory, it was the opinion of those having the experiments in charge that the demand for the Pennsylvania Railroad alone, were it to change its locomotives from coal to oil, would consume all the surplus and send up the price of oil to a figure that would compel a return to coal.

It is true that production has enormously increased in the last three years, and the promise for the near future is that a high rate will be maintained. It is further true that the production of Russia has increased enormously, and will probably be larger this year than ever before. This Russian oil must go to markets and supply demands that have been met by American oil, and this will still further increase the amount of oil available for fuel purposes.

There is no doubt, therefore, that petroleum has a future for fuel uses. Many brick manufacturers are ready to use it, notwithstanding the possibility of an advance in its cost.

While there are some objections to the use of petroleum as a fuel, growing chiefly out of the risk attending its storage and conveyance to the point of consumption, it is undoubtedly true that the chief objection is the fear that with the increased demand that would follow any extended use for this purpose would come an increase in price that would make its continued use too expensive.

Just four years ago, when the fuel oil industry was first projected, it was cried down because, as its enemies claimed, there was not enough oil fuel to be obtained in America to supply the New York City factories alone, to say nothing of other territory, and because of the high prices for oil that were sure to follow its substitution for coal fuel. Since then the industry has experienced a magnificent success, the sales exceeding 20,000,000 barrels a year, while the price is lower than ever.

A curious impression seems to have gained ground to the effect that the Standard Oil Company does not want to sell oil for fuel. It may be stated authoritatively that the company is not only able but willing to sell and deliver oil for fuel purposes in any quantity that may be desired. It is now delivering oil for fuel purposes in fourteen States of the Union. For its sales in Chicago and the West and Northwest, the delivery is by tank cars from the terminus of the pipe line at South Chicago, to which point it is pumped from Lima, O. The Chicago price is 1-2/3c. per gallon, or 70c. per barrel of 42 gallons, f.o.b. cars at Chicago.

A great many of the brick manufacturers here and throughout the Northwest are beginning to use crude petroleum as a substitute for soft coal. It is smokeless, for the fine spray of oil which comes from the injector consists of such minute drops of the liquid and is so thoroughly mixed with oxygen that when it burns the combustion is complete, and only steam and carbonic acid gas go out of the top of the kiln. Not a speck of soot comes from the kiln or the smokestack or soils the whitewashed purity of the boiler room. Oil fuel is absolutely clean. It is labor saving, too. No fireman has to keep shoveling coal, there are no ashes to be dragged out from under the furnace grates, and there are no clinkers to clog up the bars. One man, by turning a valve, may regulate the heat of a kiln containing one million brick.

Not only is it cleaner than coal and calls for less labor, but it is actually cheaper as a fuel. A barrel and a half of crude oil is equal for furnace fuel to a ton of the best Illinois bituminous coal, and at 70c. a barrel any one can easily calculate the advantages petroleum has over its smoky rival. Theoretically, two barrels of oil equal in heating power one ton of best Pittsburg coal.

An examination into the relative cost of the Pittsburg and Chicago coal to the oil consumed shows that the price of oil at Pittsburg is 59c. per barrel of 42 gallons, and slack coal can be purchased at from 70c. to 80c. per ton, and the best quality of lump coal at from $1.10 to $1.25 per ton, while the same quality of fuel can be bought in Chicago at about 70c. a barrel, as against coal at from $2 to $3.50 per ton. It would, therefore, look as though there could be no question whatever as to the economy and advantages to be derived from the use of oil as a fuel in this vicinity.

The weight of oil required is less than half that of average coal to produce the same amount of steam.

A great advantage in using oil as fuel in brick burning is that the fires are always under the absolute and direct control of the man in charge of the burning, who can regulate the volume of flame to the nicest degree and throw the heat to any part of the arches that he may desire.

From present indications, oil will be the fuel adopted generally for generating power and for brick burning in Chicago, as it saves the boilers, avoids grate bars, saves dirt and cinders, and reduces running expenses, etc.

Much skepticism was at first exhibited in Chicago only a few years ago when one of the leading brick manufacturers attempted to burn a kiln of brick with coal for fuel. Nearly all the brickmakers then in business put on wise looks and predicted the failure of the experiment with coal. But coal proved to be a better and cheaper fuel than wood, and in five or six years wood was used only for the kindling of the coal fires.

Then came the attempt to burn brick with crude oil, and the experiment having proved a success, coal has been banished from the leading brick yards in Chicago and vicinity.

The Purington-Kimball Brick Co., Adams J. Weckler, Weber & La Bond, the May-Purington Brick Co., the Union Brick Co., and the Pullman Brick Co., all having headquarters in Chicago, as well as the Peerless Brick Co. and the Pioneer Fireproof Construction Co., both of Ottawa, Ill., are using crude oil fuel for brick burning.

Lima crude oil is used, and it is atomized by means of steam in small furnaces extending about two feet from the face of the brick kilns, and in which furnaces combustion occurs, and the conversion of the oil and steam into a gaseous fuel is secured. There is little doubt that the fuel employed in the future by the successful brick manufacturer must be in the gaseous form. Owing to the enormous cost of handling coal, wood, and other crude fuel, and of removing the ash resulting from such fuel, it has been demonstrated in practice by the use of crude oil that the expense connected with the burning of brick can be reduced fully 60 per cent. This large saving is made by converting crude petroleum into gas and utilizing this fuel, either directly in the arches of the kiln or by converting the crude oil into gas in a gas producer, and drawing this fuel gas from the producer and burning the same as required in kilns of suitable construction.

Crude oil fuel must in the future play an important part in all branches of manufacture requiring high, constant heats, and in which the cost of wood, coal, and other solid fuels, together with the labor cost of handling them, forms a considerable part of the cost of production. Where coal is required to be hauled in carts from the wharves, or from a line of railway to the brick yard, located a mile, more or less, from the places where the coal is received, the cost of handling, haulage, and waste is an important item. Added to these costs, the deterioration of soft coal under atmospheric influences and the waste from imperfect combustion and from the particles which fall from the grate bars into the ash pits, all eat a large hole in the brickmakers' profit.

Mr. D.V. Purington, of Chicago, Ill., in speaking on this subject, says:

"I will say that my fuel bill for oil is cheaper than it would cost me for coal. There is a very wide difference in the cost of unloading, hauling away ashes and cinders, and getting my coal around to the kiln, or boilers, or drier, or wherever I use it, and I get very much better results by being able to put the heat from oil fuel just where I want it."

In order to secure the best results with any fuel it is not only necessary that a cheap fuel should be used, but that it should be always obtainable, and that all of it should be burned and turned to commercial account in the operations of brick manufacture.

Owing to the losses which we have previously mentioned, and resulting from the use of coal, this fuel is destined to be superseded by some form of fuel which will avoid such losses, and which will dispense with all of the inconveniences now encountered in the handling of coal and of the ashes resulting from combustion. Wood is rapidly becoming too scarce and high near the great centers of man's habitation to be regarded in the present discussion.

Fully two hundred million of brick a year are being burned in the city of Chicago with crude oil fuel, and a clamp kiln containing one million brick can be burned with crude oil in Chicago at a labor cost of less than $100, and at a total cost for labor and oil of about 40c. per thousand brick.

There are not, however, many places in the world where brick can be burned with oil at such a low cost as in the city of Chicago; the reason being that oil is not everywhere obtainable so cheaply as in this city, and because few clays in the world are so easily burned into brick as are the clays of Chicago. In Milwaukee, Wis., and in other places within a distance of 100 miles from Chicago, the time required to burn building brick with crude oil fuel averages from sixteen to twenty-one days, whereas the time of burning the Chicago clays averages only about five days, and splendid "burns" have been secured there with crude oil in three and one-half days. It is evident, therefore, that the advantages of using crude oil fuel for the burning of brick will vary in different parts of the United States.

Where circumstances and the nature of the clay permit of its use, crude oil is, next to fuel gas, the brickmakers' ideal fuel.—The Brickmaker.