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Heating, Lighting, and Refrigeration: Coal

Gas is, perhaps, the ideal fuel. It is clean, convenient, and when the price is not unduly advanced by monopolistic control, it is cheaper than any other fuel. Under present conditions it is usually somewhat more expensive, although the extra cost is, perhaps, more than made up by increased convenience and efficiency. Coal as Fuel. - Coal in its natural state consists of solid carbon combined with various proportions of hydrocarbons (or compounds of carbon with hydrogen, which may be driven off in the form of illuminating gas) and various impurities. Thus coal is really made up of two kinds of fuel: coke-which is practically all carbon-and ordinary illuminating gas. It is much more convenient and satisfactory to use coal in these two separate forms than in its natural state. Very little bituminous or soft coal is used for domestic purposes in most parts of the United States, notwithstanding its cheapness, because of the dirt, dust, coal gas, and cinders consequent upon its Anthracite or hard coal is somewhat less troublesome, but its use is wasteful because little more than the hydrocarbons driven off as gas is really consumed, the remainder being left in the form of cinders, which are usually thrown away. use.