THE PRAC TICAL PHILOSOPHY OF GAS-BURNING.
PROI3ABLY there is not a household in the Kingdom that has not suffered, more or less, from little troubles connected with the gas supply. Not many people in the present day are old -enough to remember the manifold inconveniences, the nastiness, the costliness, and the danger of the system of lighting by oil- lamps, and candles which prevailed in the days when gas as yet was not. We know that we are worried daily and nightly with gas difficulties, that our rooms are overheated, to the injury of our thealth that the air of our houses is poisoned with too perceptible effluvia, that our ceilings are blackened with smoke, and our furni- ture covered with the uneonsumed deposit of impure gas. We grumble and sigh ignorantly for the easy days of our fathers ; we endure the nuisance as long as we can, and in the long run we revert to the one remedy that suggests itself to the mind of the British householder. We send for the gas-fitter. It is unluckily needless to remind any London household that the gas-fitter is a visitor not leas appalling than his rival the plumber, equally tenacious in his hold of "a job," equally reckless in turning upside down every domestic arrangement, and equally apt to leave a little legacy of future jobs behind him. But relief must be had if possible from the constant worry of heat, smoke, foul air, hissing flames, and exaggerated gm-bills. And where to look for relief except at the gas-fitter's? There indeed we must resort in the long run, but not to got ineffective apparatus tinkered into a temporarily tolerable state. We have an easy remedy within our reach, and we find in a Parliamentary paper, of all places in the world, a shrewd, sensible, and perfectly clear state- ment of the way to get rid of all our troubles with the gas supply. This measure of comfort, which no Paterfamilias will undervalue, and which ladies who keep house will be ready to welcome with ardour, is not of course to be obtained, any more than the other comforts of life, without some cost. But we are quite sure, making a rough estimate of certain cases within our own know- ledge, that the outlay needed for providing the proper means of consuming gas in a household will be more than covered by a twelvemonth's saving in gas bills and gas-fitter's charges. There remains, as clear gain, an inestimable economy of such uupur- chasable articles as health, eyesight, and domestic comfort.
The secret of gas consumption is to secure good burners, to adapt them to the supply of gas, and to understand the simple principles by which the supply should be regulated. Probably nineteen-twentieths of the gas-burners now in use throughout the country arc of irremediably bad construction, the most economical plan of dealing with which would be to throw them aside at once. The paper on gas consumption to which we have alluded is a Report to the Board of Trade by the Gas Referees containing " the result of their investigations of the principles which regulate the development of light from gas, and the appli- cation of those principles to the construction and use of burners in the manner most advantageous and economical to the public." If any one is inclined to look contemptu- ously on so small a matter as the improvement of gas- burners, a few of the facts stated in the Report will, if he have any of the Englishman's regard for his pocket, very decidedly convert him to a sense of its importance. On an aver- age, consumers of gas, by using well-constructed and well-adapted burners, instead of the usual clumsy, haphazard kind, may. reduce their gas-bills by one-third or one-half of the whole amount, while obtaining a stronger and more steady light than they obtained before. In a middle-class household tha gas-bill is no inconsider- able item, and even if the health of the family were not concerned, it would surely be desirable to control in some measure the un- necessary and expensive consumption. But we know the careless- ness and contempt for thrift which prevails in these countries. It is more remarkable that in great business establishments, where the charges for gas must be of necessity enormous, some effort at improving the burners has not been made. The Referees, having examined a quantity of burners supplied by the leading gas-fitting firms, and having found the majority hopelessly defective, brought the matter to a practical test by visiting certain establishments in the City where night-work prevails. As an instance of the waste in such places, we are informed that in the publishing office of two great daily papers the burners chiefly in use gave out only one-half the light that the gas supplied was capable of giving, while a large number furnished only one-quarter of the true illuminating power. As compositors and other newspaper emp1oyd8 must have a strong light, it is clear that the place of this wasted power had to be supplied by additional burners. In private houses the loss is not so outrageous as this, but it is considerable almost everywhere, and the Report affirms that, on a most mode- rate estimate, one-fourth of the annual gas rental of London might be saved by the use of good burners. This rental is £2,000,000 a year, so that it is plain we are throwing away half a million per annum in mere heedless ignorance. Nor are we committing this waste with impunity. By the use of per- fect burners we burn less gas to obtain the necessary quantity of light, and the less gas we burn the leas do we pollute the air with the noxious products of combustion. The amount of these pro- ducts, too, is diminished by the employment of burners which com- pletely consume the gas supplied to them. It is obvious, there- fore, that the use of ill-contrived burners in large establishments and the resulting waste described may be a prevalent cause of
the ill-health from which newspaper printers and other night. workers suffer.
A. good gas-burner is not an imaginative article, although a perfect burner has yet to be discovered. The Referees in their recent inquiries and experiments have taken as a standard " Sugg's London Argand Burner No. 1," which is not the best invented by the maker, but seems at present the one most adapted for prac- tical use. Comparing with this burner, when burning five feet of gas per hour, those in common use under the names of " fiah-tail " and " batwing " burners, we obtain some remarkable results. Taking the standard burner's illuminating powers at 100, six fish- tail burners gave these results :-73, 62, 52, 47, 36, and 19, the latter giving less than one-fifth of the light supplied by the standard at the same consumption of gas. The batwing burners show better results, being 86 and 82, as compared with the standard. It must be observed, however, that the standard is an Argand burner, in which the supply of air to the flame is regulated by a chimney. Comparing three other argands with the standard, we find the illuminating power still far inferior, being no more than 78, 77, and 34 per cent. respectively. These tests clearly prove the superiority of Sugg's Argand No. 1 to any burner in common use. Of course it remains a question in par- ticular instances whether the cost of supplying these burners would be too great to admit of their general adoption.
A burner is to gas, and the development of light, the Report points out, what a boiler is to coal and the generation of steam. In the early days of the steam-engine, before boilers were properly adapted to their work, there was enormous waste of power, so that "one ton of coal in a locomotive of the present day generates as much force as six tons did forty years ago." But a well-constructed boiler is fitted to do its work best when consuming a fixed quantity of fuel, and there is in like manner, in the case of every gas- burner, a certain rate of consumption at which the highest illuminat- ing power in proportion to the supply is attained. Above or below this point there must be more or less waste, and there is as much above it as below it. This is a fact which deserves to be taken into account, for many consumers fancy that the more gas they turn on the better light they will get. It is now conclusively established that the quantity of gas does not influenes the develop- ment of light, that the differences perceived in the illuminating power afforded by the consumption of different quantities of the same gas is due to the difference of the burners, each burner "doing justice" to the gas at a particular rate of consumption, and declining in illuminating power when the supply falls short of this rate or exceeds it. It has been proved also that the tempera- ture at Which the gas is supplied to the burner makes no practical difference in the light, that an over-supply of air to the flame and an excess of pressure in the supply-pipe are adverse to illu- minating power. Gas, it appears, is in the fittest state to be burned, and to give out its maximum of light when it streams through the burner under little or no pressure, flowing upwards like a natural flame. The practical suggestion deducible from these conclusions is, that the burners should be improved, and we have called attention to the best type yet brought into use. We are also warned to provide for the equal distribution of gas to all parts of the flame, which may be interfered with by irregular or unclean burners ; it "should issue with a smooth and easy flow," which will not be the case if a " swirl " is imparted to it by the construction of the burner, or of the tube between it and the tap. An uneven flow, which makes the flame " roar"—a too familiar sound—mixes air with the gas, and so diminishes the illuminating power. Poor gas, such as is often supplied in large cities, suffers ranch from contact with air, and the main difficulty is to keep down the pressure which mingles the gas with the surrounding atmo- sphere. Another important observation is that gas flames give out their maximum of light when on the point of smoking. Unfortu- nately, however, this point is not perceptible except in the case of Argand burners. After the monstrous waste, however, of money and of health that has been shown to result from the use of com- mon burners, we can hardly doubt that anybody who can afford the primary cost will hesitate to adopt the admirable form of Argand burner which the Referees have adopted as their standard.
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