21 64858 PLUCKING TWO MILLIONS OUT OF THE AIR By H. G. HUNTING RACTICALLY to pick a hundred thousand horse-power off the tops of eight roaring blast-furnaces and to use it in performing a hundred giant tasks, is lossal apparatus now being installed in the purpose of COthe wonderful steel plant building at Gary, Indiana. By means of a heretofore unthought of extension of the use of the blast-furnace gas, the Indiana Steel Company will save and put to work a power which has been only partly used up to now, and which was once utterly wasted. And that this power will entirely displace steam, in the great mills, and that the rolling of more than two million tons of steel ingots per year will be but one portion of the work it will perform are facts that indicate the tremendous importance of the innovation, For every ton of pig-iron which flowed for many years from the mouths of the world's blast-furnaces, the power of twenty-five horses was generated-and wasted. Unrecognized, hundreds of thousands of horse-power, that might have moved the machinery of half the crafts that cluster around the most useful of the metals, was lost in green and yellow fire-works, before men began to Now, by a process that has been a growth, but which has only just reached perfection, the gas is preserved and used, and the wheels of the whole ently turn before its power alone. great industry of steel-making will pres see. pany at Gary, Indiana, is being installed world has seen. Thirty-three huge gas. the most remarkable power-plant that the engines, each of 3.000 horse-power, have At the mills of the Indiana Steel Com housings are being provided to receive them. They are to use only the gas produced by the iron smelters, in the process of making pig from ore, and they are to furnish the power, which, when converted into electricity, will turn every shaft and pulley and roll and wheel in the Copyright, 1908, by Technical World Company. been ordered and the foundations and ROCKT PUPI 3 4 .417 TECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE ONE BEARING OF A 6,000 HORSE-POWER ELECTRIC MOTOR. On the upper right-hand corner stands a complete auxiliary motor, which may operate the switch controlling its big brother. the gas producer, where the object is to manufacture only gas. The result is that one of the most important by-products of the industry is the inflammable gas which it is now proposed to use. The idea of utilizing it is not entirely new, for ever since 1897, when three separate concerns in three separate countries began simultaneous experiments along this line, there has been a continued effort to perfect plans by which to make the most of it. It has remained for the United States The principle which lies back of the whole matter, the value of which can hardly be said to have been recently discovered but which has been but recently fully realized, is that the gas, applied direct in the internal combustion engine of proper design, will produce from two and a half to three times as much power as the gas used as fuel for the production of. steam. Blast-furnace gas has already been utilized in part for the latter purpose. A first effort toward saving it was in the |