CHAPTER XVI.

LIQUID FUEL.

Petroleum Furnaces no Novelty-Use of Oil Fuel in Ancient Times-Enormous Supply Available at Baku-The Early Use of Hydro-Carbon Gas-Bricks of Oil-Invention of Oil-Burning Appliances in America-Aydon's FurnaceShpakovsky's Discovery of the Value of Steam as a Pulverizer-Why Liquid Fuel has not been Adopted in England and America. The Piracy of English Inventions by Russian Engineers in the Caspian Region-The First Liquid Fuel Steamer in the Caspian-Shpakovsky's Success-Improvements Effected by Lenz, the Inventor of the Apparatus now Generally in Use on Board the Caspian Steamers-Flat-flame Pulverizers-Account of the Vessels Using Lenz's Apparatus The Oil-burning Locomotives on the Transcaucasian Railway - Brandt and Karapetoff's Pulverizers-The Rival Advantages of Oil and Coal-Experience in the Caspian-Crude Petroleum may be Safely Used as well as Oil Refuse-Extension of the Use of Petroleum-burning Locomotives on Russian Railways The Discovery of Oil in Beluchistan, and its Effect on the Russian Railway to India-Liquid Fuel in the Black Sea-Summary of its MeritsProspects of Petroleum Fuel in the East-Satisfactory Results Already Achieved.

IF it be true that one half the world does not know how the other half lives, it is still truer that one half the world is ignorant of what the other half does. In Western Europe engineers are constantly peddling with petroleum furnaces, and putting forth liquid fuel as a novelty. In India the authorities undertake experiments with amateur squirts of oil and steam, with a view to proving whether oil will burn in furnaces or not, and treat the whole question de novo. If a London newspaper publishes a leading article on the substitution of petroleum refuse for wood or coal, it regards the matter as a purely speculative idea; feasible enough may-be, but still for the moment merely an interesting topic for dilettante writing. Yet liquid fuel for heating furnaces

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has been for years an established institution, and the barbarous distant Caspian region, associated in the public mind with Turcomans, scorpions, shifting deserts, and slow-paced caravans, is able to act through it the part of instructor to the engineers of the world.

In the Caspian basin petroleum refuse is the only fuel used in the furnaces of steamers, locomotives, and factory-engines. Liquid fuel has throughout this region replaced wood and coal, and the use of it is now extending as far as Moscow to the north, Teheran to the south, Merv and Khiva to the east, and Batoum to the west. Baku is the centre of the liquid fuel system. It is the Newcastle of the Caspian. Ere long it promises to become the fuel source of the Euxine also; in which case there will be an end to the export of English coal to the Black Sea.

From the account given of the fountains at Baku, it will have been seen that enormous quantities of crude oil are wasted every year. But it is not the original petroleum that is most advantageous for fuel, although it can be readily utilized; but the residue after the refining operations. This is called by the Russians astatki, which is simply the word for" dregs." In Baku the Tartar word mazoot is more commonly used. It means the same thing. Astatki, or neftiani astatki, however, is the term that has become adopted by commercial men throughout Russia, and is evidently destined to be the permanent designation. Of this astatki, countless millions of gallons have been wasted during the last ten years. In 1883 the aggregate export of astatki to Russia by all the Baku firms was 281,000 tons. On the other hand, the production was estimated as exceeding half a million tons; leaving, after making allowance for the consumption in the refineries, perhaps as much as 200,000 tons, or 50 million gallons, undis

posed of. Owing to this glut, the price for years has fluctuated between a few pence and half-a-crown a ton, varying according to the demand and the distance of the product from the coast; while enormous quantities have been allowed to run away to waste. During the last few months Nobel Brothers have completed the organization of their refinery, and for the future expect to turn out oil refuse at the rate of 1,300 tons a day, or 450,000 tons in the course of a year. As in a good hydro-carbon furnace one ton of oil-dregs goes as far as three tons of mineral fuel, it follows that this single establishment alone will produce annually the equivalent of 1,350,000 tons of coal.

From time immemorial petroleum has been used as fuel in the Caspian region. The earliest Persian records refer to its utilization for heating purposes. The works of travel of Arabs of the eighth century constantly mention this fact. In Marco Polo's time Baku exported petroleum for fuel as far as Bagdad. When the Russians first burst their way into the Caspian, they found the extraction and shipment of the oil a regular branch of Persian commerce. But it must be admitted that the use of the liquid fuel was on a very limited scale. In the Apsheron peninsula it was never employed when hydrocarbon or petroleum gas, issuing naturally from the ground, could be more easily obtained; nor did the natives possess any apparatus for burning the liquid fuel. They simply mixed it with dirt or ashes. When the Transcaspian Trading Company established kerosine factory at Baku in 1858, they did not do what is the regular custom to-day-construct the refinery on the coast at the Black Town, and use crude petroleum or oil refuse in the furnaces-but chose Surakhani as the site, on account of the supply of hydro-carbon gas afforded spontaneously by the soil. This gas was

a

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allowed to accumulate in gasometers, placed over the crevices in the limestone, and was thence conducted to the furnace. It was not until three years afterwards that the refuse oil was used instead. The first to introduce this innovation at Baku was a mechanic named Werser, employed at a refinery which a German, Herr Witte, had established on Holy Island. He adopted various contrivances for burning the oil, but ultimately settled upon an apparatus, consisting of a series of grates or griddles, amidst which the liquid trickled and burnt. In 1867 he took out a patent for this, and many firms adopted the apparatus, but it was so wasteful that they relinquished it the moment better contrivances came into use.

In the meanwhile a whole series of eminent men, in various countries of Western Europe, had advocated the utilization of oil refuse as liquid fuel. Cochrane urged its employment in this country quite fifty years ago. But it was not until about the sixth decade of the present century that the inventor came to the aid of the man of science; the occasion being created by the opening up of the petroleum deposits of America by Drake's new system of boring wells for oil. John Bidley took out a patent in the United States for an oil furnace for steamers in 1862, and Shaw and Linton six months later. The first was a very unsatisfactory invention, and nothing practical seems to have come of it; but in the case of the second, the United States Government appointed a commission to examine its merits. Their report was distinctly favourable to the employment of liquid fuel, and the interest excited penetrated even to Russia; where, at the time, the naval authorities in the Caspian region were trying to use in the furnaces petroleum bricks the oil worked into masses of pitch-like consistency, and thrown into the furnaces in the same

manner as ordinary coal. In 1864 the Scientific Committee of the Russian Admiralty recommended that the Russian consular agent in America should be instructed to furnish reports of the progress of liquid fuel, and send home drawings of any appliances that might come into use there. The same year experiments were also carried on at Woolwich Dockyard with the Richardson apparatus, invented in this country, and of which much was expected; but directly it became apparent that a demand might arise for waste oil, the latter, which up to then had possessed no value, rose to a price that placed competition with coal completely out of the question.

In this simple fact may be detected the principal cause of the ill-success that attended the advocacy of liquid fuel in England and America. In both countries coal was abundant and cheap, and the advantages of oil fuel were less apparent than in the Caspian region, where the Russian territory bordering on the sea contained neither wood nor coal, and where as much as £5 a ton was sometimes paid for anthracite. The difficulties attending the dispatch of coal from the Don valley to the Caspian region compelled Russia to resort to the use of liquid fuel, and this explains its rapid development once a good apparatus had been invented to consume it.

The honour of inventing this must be divided between two persons, Aydon, an Englishman, and Shpakovsky, a Russian. Both hit upon the idea about the same time, of making an apparatus to pulverize the oil, and blow it into the furnace in the form of spray. This principle is the main feature of all the appliances in use in the Caspian region to-day. But the utility of the idea rested upon the means adopted to carry it into practice, and when we come to examine this point, we