WASTE AT THE ANTHRACITE MINES.
If we take fifteen per cent. as the average waste of our mines in dust or refuse coal (and this is a low estimate), we find that we sustain a loss of one and a half millions on a business of ten million tons per annum. This immense amount of waste is con stantly being piled up around our mines in vast, unsightly mounds, burying our mining villages, and sadly encroaching on the limits of our chief towns. Those who are familiar with St. Clair will remember the mountains of coal-dirt which almost encircle it, and which encroach even on its streets.
The amount of this waste that now lies around our coal-mines cannot be short of 15,000,000 tons, and each year adds to the rapidly accumulating dirt-banks, though every flood of rain carries off' a portion to our cellars, streets, canals, and rivers. It will become a necessity in time to find some mode of disposing of it.
There can be no doubt that it can be made use of, and perhaps with much profit and advantage, if capital and enterprise could be diverted from the coal-mines to the coal-banks. The amount of money required to put up a first-class colliery capable of mining and shipping 500 tons a day, would erect machinery powerful enough to com press even anthracite coal-dust to a state almost as solid as when it existed in its bed beneath the mountains; and perhaps the amount so consolidated per day would not be less than could be obtained from the mine. Anthracite coal-dust can be solidified by pressure without the admixture of any foreign ingredient; but the pressure must be powerful. An admixture of ten per cent. of wet peat, or of five per cent. of fine clay, will help the solidification, and make the blocks more tenacious and durable. The amount of ash or residue would not be greater than that left by the consumption of ordinary coal, since the combustion is more perfect, and no cinders or unburned embers are left.
But, when circumstances will admit, an admixture of fifty per cent. of the rich bituminous coals will make a better fuel, and require no other adhesive substance than the bitumen which the bituminous coal contains, which is brought into an oily state by heat. By mixing half-and-half of the anthracite dust with fine or pulverized bitumi nous coal, and pressing them with great power in a hot state, the solidification will will be complete. But the pressure required is much greater than may readily be
imagined by those who have not tried the experiment. The writer instituted a series of such experiments, at considerable cost of time and money, some years ago, and speaks from practical operations. Perhaps the best place to establish such a business would be near some large city, where either clay or bituminous coal can be had more readily than around the anthracite mines, and the anthracite dust can be transported cheaper in that condition than when formed in blocks ready for fuel.
Coal-tar and coal-oil have been proposed, and the former is used extensively in Europe to produce composition fuel. Coal-tar is certainly as good as bituminous coal, but we do not think it could be obtained in sufficient quantities and at a cost to justify its use for such a purpose.
Bituminous coal is always accessible at reasonable cost, and the fine coal can always be had for considerable less than the lump coal,—enough so, in fact, to pay for the operation of compressing. The Richmond (Virginia) coal is the most available for such a purpose, on account of its fat and bituminous character, and may be mined and brought to Philadelphia cheaper than the coal from our anthracite mines, by the same outlay and enterprise displayed by the anthracite miners, since the coal is only 15 miles, on an average, from tide-water on the James, or not more than the average distance of our anthracite mines from the head of navigation on the Schuylkill or Lehigh, or the head of the leading railroad lines to Philadelphia.
We have no doubt of the feasibility of the plan here suggested as a means of con verting our immense heaps of waste into an excellent article of fuel, with much profit to those who might engage in it, provided they put capital enough in to insure success. Such a "mutual coal-consumers' company" would stand better chances of their winter's fuel and of reasonable profits than many which have been blindly and foolishly gone into by the coal-consumers of the Eastern cities.