Siemens.
But an economy which promises to be of great importance is now sought
in the recovery and useful application of those constituents of coal
which, in the coking process, have hitherto been lost; or, as an
alternative, in a similar recovery in those cases in which the coal is
charged in a raw state into the blast furnace, as is the practice in
Scotland and elsewhere. This recovery of the hydrocarbons and the
nitrogen contained in the coal, and their collection as tar and
ammoniacal liquors, and subsequent conversion into sulphate of ammonia
as to the latter, and into the various light and heavy paraffin oils
and the residual pitch as to the former, have now been carried on for
a considerable time at two of the Gartsherrie furnaces; and they are
already engaged in applying the necessary apparatus to eight more
furnaces. In the coke oven the recovery of these by-products--if that
name can be properly applied to substances which yield the most
brilliant colors, the purest illuminants, and the flesh-forming
constituents supplied by the vegetable world--would appear at first
sight to be simpler; but it has presented its own peculiar
difficulties; the chief of which was, or was believed to be, a
deterioration in the quality of what has hitherto been the principal,
but what may, perhaps, come to be regarded hereafter as the residual
product, namely, the coke. But the more recent experience of Messrs.
Pease, at Crook, appears not to justify this opinion.
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