Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1916 — Page 2

Turning Garbage into Fuel

How cities and towns can convert this troublesome waste product into practical profit:: An enterprise which promises to yield big returns to wide-awake communities in America

JK W ANVFACTURING a highgi’mle fuel from garbage is a new industry that promJBryn A ises to solve the problem of disposing of the waste of cities and towns. In Noventber of last yeardhe first experimenta l -ptant of tho disposal process was established in San Antonio, Tex It proved so successfulthat the pity of Austin decided to order the construction of a plant, and the factory, which was opened a few weeks ago, is now running to full capacity, - -a- sanitary manner and converting it into bricks of fuel which tests have prove*] to be the equal~of trttuminoiis~coaT. The inventor of the new fuel Is Mr. E. L. Culver of Chicago, who began investigating the possibility and practicability of commercializing municipal garbage about five years ago. As a result of a long series of experiments he proved the adaptability of a method for making fuel bricks out of the refuse. In addition to the plant at Austin, Regina, Canada, has entered into contract for the erection of a municipal plant. The process of manufacturing Oakoal, a name given to the new fuel because of its similarity to oak wood in burning, is similar to the making of stiff mud bricks, practically the same machinery being used, although much less power is used, and less care is required to produce perfect bricks of fuel. The combination producing tire best results for domestic purposes is a mixture of equal parts of coal dust — the waste dust from coal mines—and garbage, with the addition of about 7 per cent of coal tar. For steam purposes no coal dust is required. Each brick weighs, when dry, two pounds, so that I.IMKI bricks make a ton. For convenience in handling, as well as the protection of the public against short weights, the fuel is sold schedule of prices for 1 .(Mio or 10U bricks. One still mud brick machine of the type used at the Austin plant turns out in eight hours' run. 25,000 bricks, —or 25 Tons of Oakorttp'uml in erectingplants this is termed a one-unit plaqt, which has a full capacity of 75 tons dally. In erecting municipal plants, other units can be installed to suit the capacity of the city, or until all of the available binding material of the city is consumed. It is estimated that a city will produce for each one thousand people approximately a" ton of garbage a day, or for domestic purposes oyer two tons of brick fuel. The manufacture of the new fuel is extremely interesting inasmuch as it is made up entirely of was'e material "handled I y comm* n labor. The waste which the city formerly had to burn —ln an Incinerator at a considerable »x----penso i - now taken by carts direct to the factory, where it is dumped op a sorting platform J;U ra J' ed wi,h creosote as a sanitary"precaution, as well as to allow the sorters to work in comfort. Openings are provided in these platforms where the different parts of the garbage are dropped into conveyors arid conveyed as follows: the pieces of iron to a storage; the bottles to a washing tank, where they are sterilized before being stored; the rags to a washing machine, where they are sterilized by being washed in boiling water; the ashes, stone, brick, etc., to a storage and used for fills, and the tin cans to a press where they are baled and conveyed to storage. That which is left and of a combustible nature is placed on a large 40-foot

CONDENSATIONS

Italian olive trees are being cut down for fuel. In a town In the heart of Russian Balt Helds many Rouses are built of Balt An Indian tribe in Bolivia shuns the whites and lives as in the stone age, making tools and weapons of stone, bone and wood. . z

belt three feet wide and carried to a huge grinder which reduces it to fine pieces. From this grinder it is conveyed to a pulping machine, where hot water and live steam is applied together with a certain percentage of tar, which acts in -conjunction- with the hot water and steam as a thorough disinfectant of the product and also as deodorizer of the smoke of the fuel while being consumed as well as a deodorizer of the = fuel itself. The mass is thoroughly mixed in this machine and is reduced to a pulp. From this machine the mass is conveyed to a mixer, where coal dustjs added in the desired proportion, according to the purpose for which the fuel is to be used. For steam purposes, where rapid combustion is required, coal dust is unnecessary. although a very small percentage is- sometimes used, while for domestic purposes, where a slow even fire is desired, the best results are obtained by the addition of 50 per cent of coal dust. From the mixer the mass drops into a molding machine where it is molded into bricks. Then it is conveyed through a drying kiln where the bricks are thoroughly dried. All conveyors, elevators and machinery are tightly inclosed so that there is no escape of dust, and the only odor in the entire plant is the smell of creosote that is contained in the tar. For this reason it is perfectly possible to establish a plant in the business or residential districts of a city without being offensive. The remarkable spec--tacle of seeing old shoes, hats.„papety •rags. straw, manure, house garbage, night soil and a variety of other waste products being thrown into one machine and emerging from another in the shape of a perfect fuel-brick, without odor and bearing no resemblance whatever to the original materials, is almost miraculous.

Among the advantages claimed for the new fuel are that it will not slack, no matter how long it is kept in storage, that it is Impervious to water, and that it burns to ashes without leaving a semblance of clinkers. It also produces practically no ordor and very when burning. There is a very large percentage, often as high as 23 per cent, of the ordinary coals, that escapes through the grates without being consumed, so that it fre-

Japan’s ambitious plao for making its railways broad gauged will take until 1943 for completion, it is estl-» mated, and will cost something like $700,000,000. The capacity of a clothesline is doubled by a new device that .straddles the line and provides two pieces of wire to which clothes can be fastened.

by Robert H.Moulton

by Dr. William B. Philips, director of the bureau of economic geology and technology of the University of Texas, showed that twelve pounds of the garbage fuel bricks will burn on an average of two and a half hours in a small stove, as againsttwo hours and twenty minutes of the same amount of lump bituminous coal, and will produce the same amount of heat as the latter. The average cost of manufacturing the fuel at ther AusUn“plans ton, without considering the revenue derived by the city from the sale of byproducts, such as rags, tin cans, bottles, brass, copper, zinc, rubber, etc. Dr. F. M. Gunn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who recently delivered a series of lectures on sanitation and garbage disposal at the University of Texas, expressed the opinion that the process which Mr. Culver invented is one of the most promising schemes so-far advanced for handling city refuse; that it appeared to him that it was the best way of getting rid of waste and rubbish in a sanitary manner, and that the method might work a new epoch in the garbage and fuel problems of the country.

PLANT THAT MAKES “ICE”

Habits of "the Frost Weed Have Long Proved a Puzzle to Botanists. Late in autumn, after producing two sets of blooms, the frost weed becomes -ar- miniature icefactory and forms crystals of “ice” about the cracked bark of the root. On each little broken rootlet there appear cakes of “ice,” exactly’ right in size for the refrigerator of a fairy queen. As yet no botanist has been able to discover the secret of the plant’s ice-making. The ice appears often long before IbeUs formed on the ponds, and can be found by digging up the deeply set rootlets. Two blooming seasons is another peculiarity of the plant. Early in June it sends out a wealth of golden yellow blossoms, having five petals each and set at intervals upon the thickly leaved stem. « Therf late in Augus.t--th£ plant flowers again, producing bloomsMdentical with those of the earlier season.

She was beginning to carry weight for age, and he wasn't as young as he was a year previous. “Do you believe in long engagements?’' he asked, cautiousf/. “Ah,” .she sighed. “I’ll believe in any kind you prefer if you’ll give me a chance.” ' i

you like the sawdust circle? Dax—Are you talking about the circus or coconut-pie?

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER. IND„

qnently pays to sift the ashes in order to recover a of this amount. The fuel bricks, on the other hand, due to their shape and the thorough distribution of their parts, are consumed with almost perfect combustion. The shape of the brick is retained until it is entirely consumed, after which a fine, light, cigarlike ash remains. Experiments made

Nothing But the Truth.

A Trifle Ambiguous.

SAVES MANY STEPS

IDEA FOR HOUSE CONVENIENCE WORTH WHILE. ■■ A Combined China Closet, Serving Table and Roller Tray That Costs Little and Is Quite Easy to Construct. * This convenience comprises a china closet, serving table and roller tray all in one. This device was built by using a box five Inches deep for the top and placing four wooden posts for legs. Dimensions; Top of table, 31% inches long by 16% inches wide and 29 inches high, and a serving compartment 5 inches deep. The top of the table is put on hinges and straps or small chains fastened to it to keep the top from falling back too fifr when opened. The bottom of the serving compartment is 5 inches below this top. Around the sides of this compartment are little screw hooks on which the cups may be hung. In the compartment, which may be lined with white oilcloth, is space for serving dishes for six. Below the serving compartment is a drawer which is divided in the center by a one-half-inch

Combined China Closet, Serving Table and Roller Tray.

One side is used for the linen and one side for the silver. The side used for the silver is lined wtth. blue outing flannel because this serves the same purpose and is cheaper than felt. A spool was cut into halves to make the knobs for the drawer and a pair of these knobs was placed on each side so that the drawer could be used from either side. The legs were square pieces of wood inches square with rollers. Old rubber-tired wheels from toy wagons or discarded baby coaches may be used. This is an improvement because the tray rolls noiselessly. In some cases the legs from old tables can be used in place of having these made. At each end two brackets were placed so that the table could be pushed or pulled. When the soiled dishes were taken to the kitchen anti washed, they were placed in this serving compartment with one handling only, the lid placed down and the roller tray rolled into the dining room, with the dishes and silver ready for setting the table at the next meal. It Is not necessary to put them away because they are out of the dust when the top is down. The estimated cost of this convenience is: Dry goods box $0.25 1 yard blue outing flannel Au 1 remnant white oilcloth 15 2 hinges Jy t rollers 1 can es mahogany'Stain au Total shos With a small doily and a vase of flowers this roller tray answers the purpose of a serving table and makes a very attractive piece of furniture.

To Eliminate Housework.

To make the house beautiful and livable and at the same time easy to care for, try what elimination and organization will do. One would think the bedroom would be difficult to simplify, but it will bend to the will as readily as the sitting room. Keep in mind just two things—with good outline a bedroom is furnished once in a llfetifte. Then rejnember color. It Is astonishing what can be done in the most economical fashion in the world with color in the bedroom. One does not need a single bit of white from start to finish except in sheets, pillow cases and towels. Plunge into color for the window draperies, for the outside spread for the bed and for the rugs.

Stuffed Cherry Salad.

Use large black cherries; canned cherries can be substituted, but red cherries are generally too tart. Pit the cherries jand stuff with hazelnut kernels. If cherries are small, cut kernels of nuts in small pieces. Heap a tiny mound on crisp* lettuce and serve with mayonnaise or boiled dressing. This is a very attractive salad.

Convenient Duster.

Buy a little ten-cent dish mop. Saturate It with furniture oil, and use it when dusting window sills, mopboards, lighting fixtures, legs of tables and chairs, etc. It absorbs all of the dust and is easily cleaned with hot soapsuds.

Glass Rolling-Pin.

A glass rolling-pin is Specially good to use when making pastry. It 18 ted with aluminum caps which can be removed, and the interior of the roliei packed with ice.

To Whip Thin Cream.

When cream is too thin to whip easily, add the white of an egg to eacl pint of cream.

Wonderful Dunes of Indiana

LYING within a ride of one hour and a half from the center of the city of Chicago is a natural wonderland, which has attracted the keen Interest of scientists the worlds over. Yet it is not likely that one out of a thousand Chicago people ever visits it —much less is acquainted with the marvels which it presents. When the International Association of Geographers held their meeting in Chicago years ago its members —scientists from several continents, who were familiar with parts of the world —were asked what features they specially wished to see in the United States. Every one of them included in his list of four or five localities the sand dunes about the southern end of Lake Michigan. They shared honors with the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and Niagara Falls as the leading attractions of the country in the minds of the visiting scientists. Lately earnest efforts have been made to Induce Indiana to purchase the dunes tract and make of it a state park. It has also been suggested that the federal government acquire it and set it aside as a national park. Wonderful Wild Flowers. The first thing which makes the sand dunes country unique in America is the great number of rare wild flowers which grow there and nowhere else within hundreds of miles of Chicago. Perhaps in no other single place are to be found all the thousand varieties of plant life which are native to the dunes. Here, for instance, one is startled to see the cactus—typical of the western deserts —growing in profusion. Here also the trailing arbutus, usually found only much farther north, blooms in all its glory. In the dune woods are to be found ten or a dozen varieties of orchids, the flowers of which are strange-

ly beautiful. One must go hundreds of miles from Chicago to find in any other locality such a display of orchids. In the spring the more wooded dunes are carpeted with ten or more different kinds of violets and in the early fall the fringed gentian—almost extinct elsewhere about Chicago—blooms in great abundance on the sloping sides of the dunes. This is but to mention the first half dozen of the more than thousand varieties of plant life which make the dunes with their intervening marshes and sloughs the greatest attraction within many mljes of Chicago to lovers of wild flowers. But the dunes have another and a most remarkable feature which makes them almost unique in the affection of the scientist and nature lover. Plants and trees, it is known, change their shapes and their habits of growth to accommodate themselves to changing natural conditions. Usually these

changes extend over centuries, so slow is the normal change in the surface of the land on which they grow and in the other factors which affect them. The Shifting Panorama. But in the dune country such changes in surface are rapid. From year to year the dunes creep and crawl under the influence of the winds. New dunes are created, old dunes swept away; where a dune has been conquered by plants and trees and has stood the same for years the shifting sands may start an invasion and pile a new dune on top of the old. To all these constantly shifting conditions the trees and plants as constantly fight to accommodate themselves. z One may see a promising forest of Jack pines, maples or cottonwoods half buried in the rising sand or drowned in the flood, with nothing bu£ their dead tops projecting. One may find where the willows, for instance, quickly changing to meet the changing conditions, have grown trunks twice as tall as usual, with roots running out several feet higher than the original surface of the ground. Sometimes after the trees have grown tall the sand moves away instead of piling up and the roots are left bare, twisting and twining in curious shapes. Some of the sand dunes are more than 10 feetJiigh, and in many instances their tops and sides are carved into beautiful and strange shapes the lake winds. Especially desirable is the preservation of a part of the dune country as a park and reservation for wild life near

CDMBINO ThE- MINIATURI. MOUNTAINS

Prof. H. C. Cowles of the department of botany in the University of Chicago, who has worked and studied in the dunes for 20 years, has often seen eagles there. Many varieties of owls and hawks are also among the feathered residents. A large part of the dune country which Is adjacent to Chicago has already been exploited. The manufacturing town of Gary was built among the dunes, which were leveled to suit the purposes of commerce. z Another big tract is used as a sand mine and ruined as an object of natural beauty and interest. - It happens that during the Gary boom a tract of 2,500 acres, lying between Dune Park station and Michigan City, was bought up by a local syndicate and is still held untouched in its original condition. It fronts eight miles on Lake Michigan, and Professor Cowles is authority for the statement that its beach cannot be surpassed by that at Atlantic City. The slope out to deep water is most gradual, and the sand itself is much finer than ordinary sea sand, because it is sifted by the winds, which leave only the finest.

CERNAVODA BRIDGE A WONDER

Great Railway Span Across the Danube Cost Roumanian Government Nearly $7,000,000. Regele Carol I Is the official name of the greatest bridge in Roumanla and one of the most interesting series of railway spans in the world. It is the long steel and stone link which when completed in 1895 bound Ostend on the North sea to Constantza on the Black sea, two ports that at the outbreak of this war were connected by a de luxe express train service three times .a weeks, says a bulletin of the National Geographic society. At the time it was thrown open to traffic this was the only bridge spanning the Danube below the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The engineer responsible for the structure was a Roumanian, A. Sallgny, by whose name the village of Cernavoda is designated on some of the more modern maps of that country.

THE EVER CHANGING DUNES

Together with the approaches and the stone causeways across that part of the neighboring marshes and meadows which are -subject to periodical inundations, this great structure is fully 14 miles long. The bridge proper, over the main channel of the river,4s—a slender iron structure more than 2,400 feet long, disposed in. five arches. Two mighty abutments on the right and left banks, together with six stone piers and ice-breakers, support this section which is elevated more than 100 feet above the water, thus enabling the tallest vessels to pass beneath it without hindrance. The bridge cost the Roumanian government nearly $7,000,000. With its completion Bucharest was brought within a seven hoars’ journey of the Black sea shore. The eastern end of the bridge is 30 miles in an airline west of Constantza, and 90 miles east of Bucharest. The distance by rail between the capital and the port is 147 miles. Owing to the importance of this line in the handling of troops landed at Constantza by Russian transports, work probably has been rushed on the double tracking of the road between Bucharest and Cernavoda, this extension of the state-owned railway system having been decided upon by the Roumanian parliament more than a year ago.

a big city, because in addition to its wealth of plant growth it is one of the great way-stations of the birds in their flights to and from the South. The chain of the great lakes bars the North and South pathway of the birds for hundreds of miles, and in their multitudes ,they sweep round the western edge of Lake Michigan to find the first open road. In the spring and fall hundreds of different species stop over in the wooded country of the dunes to rest their wings. Eagles Seen There.

Unfavorable Experience.

“What's your idea of a scientist?” "The only one I ever met,” replied Mr. Growcher; “was of the kind that use words of six syllables to explain that they don’t know something.”