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the way to those who should lead. If the public service company, to borrow from Mr. Sloan, practices the principle that "pigs is pigs," it is difficult to see on what ground a commission should dissent.

In Respect to the Discussion Presented by Mr. Laraway:

I would ask—if a company sustains a loss through its merchandise or voluntary activities, whence does it recover such loss, unless from its gas operations. By what right then as a public service company, does it take from its gas consumers a toll, in a higher price for gas than would otherwise be necessary, to give to some one consumer a stove for less than it is worth?

The suggested difficulty of establishing the wholesale prices of residuals as between one department and another is not insuperable. Mathematical accuracy is here of less practical consequence than fairness.

The application of the London Sliding Scale, or of any other form of agreement for division of profits between the municipality or the consumers and the company is in no wise incompatible with the principle of keeping separate the public and private activities of a public service company.

Replying to Mr. Schaddelee's Discussion:

Mr. Schaddelee adverts at some length to the university work, which it does not seem to me is germane to the subject, and I will only therefore express a most emphatic dissent from any suggestion to substitute any part of the university work for any other line of effort. We may well add, but I believe we can not, without great loss, subtract.

Now as to convincing courts and commissions. In the last analysis these tribunals are the determiners of the equities of a given question. No man and no group of men engaged in an industry can hope to carry conviction to others until they are themselves convinced.

The company that has and will present the facts and that can and will show that its seucrities are legitimate that is giving the kind of service the public has a right to expect, and that can

permit the light upon the source and disposition of all its revenue, will not suffer very severely even in this day. But when the doctors disagree, the patient is apt to have a bad time of it.

Mr. Schaddelee says, "All the work we do in carrying on the new business department, the appliance department, is really with the one object of selling gas. I think we all agree on that.” Emphatically we do not all agree on that; but of course on that stand there could be no argument and existing methods would be sufficiently good.

There is a very distinct difference between the promotion of new business and the sale of appliances following upon that promotion. The former is a species of capital investment or at least advanced, i. e. prepaid, expene account; the latter is ordinary merchandising.

It is not within the scope of the paper to enter into a discussion of the policy of selling appliances below the fair profit at which dealers must sell; but it may be remarked en passant that it has become axiomatic in other lines that if the demand is created the public will find a reasonable price for the article. Why the gas business should consider itself an exception and on top of that antagonize the dealers whom it also wants for customers, is a phase of the situation which I confess to an inability to understand.

In our own case we sell nothing (other than special industrial installations) except at such a profit as puts us on a par with the dealer. We may not monopolize all the trade but at least we make a proper profit on what we do sell, the legitimate dealers are content and I am convinced the total of gas using appliances sold is not appreciably affected. Most important, it is Right—the essence of the square deal—to the gas consumer, to the purchaser of the appliances, and to the fellow dealer.

The gas business, meaning thereby those things which a gas company must or should do in the proper supplying of gas, should stand on its own feet; and the collateral activities, meaning thereby the voluntary, optional and incidental business, should also stand upon its own feet. That is my conviction and my practice.

Many different ways of doing this can doubtless be devised and successfully employed. The crucial question is-Do we accept the principle?

In General:

I would emphasize that in any intelligent discussion of the subject, it is essential to at all times keep clearly in mind that it is a Principle and not a Practice that is under consideration.

THE WASHER-COOLER AS A GAS CONDENSER.

Warren S. Blauvelt.

Three years ago Mr. William Seymour presented to this Association an interesting and instructive paper, entitled "A New Method of Condensing and Scrubbing," in which he described the Doherty Washer-Cooler installed at Grand Rapids and gave records of its performance. It is the purpose of this paper to note some further developments in the type of apparatus described by Mr. Seymour, giving a description of the washer-coolers installed as coal gas condensers by The Solvay Process Company at their Detroit coke oven plant, and the results from their operation.

The gas condensing apparatus in use at this plant, prior to 1909, consisted of sixteen tubular condensers, each eight feet in diameter, and containing one hundred eighty-seven tubes four inches in diameter and eighteen feet long. The total tube cooling surface with these condensers was 56,400 square feet. The ground area required for the condensers and their connections approximated 1,800 square feet.

The cooling waters available at this plant come from two sources. River water in unlimited quantity may be had for the cost of pumping. In extremely hot weather however, its temperature occasionally rises to 80 degrees F. and during two months in summer is seldom below 72 degrees F. About 150 gallons per minute of well water at 60 degrees F. are also available for gas condensation. With these supplies of cooling water, the old condensers were doing their utmost in midsummer, when cooling daily nine million cubic feet of gas direct from the hydraulic mains, to about 80 degrees F.

When the decision was made to increase the capacity of the plant to 1,350 tons of coal coked daily, reaching this figure in September, 1910, it was evident that the capacity of the gas condensing plant would have to be increased about 50 per cent. To have secured this additional capacity with tubular condensers would have required ground area in excess of that available, and would have involved a heavy investment in condensers and piping. The results obtained with an experimental Doherty WasherCooler, similar to the one described in Mr. Seymour's paper, had been so satisfactory that it was decided to secure the required condenser capacity by replacing the tubular condensers with washer-coolers. In order to keep down the cost, it was determined to use the old condenser shells for the new apparatus.

At this plant the gas coming from the ovens during the first part of the coking period is kept separate from that coming off later, thus requiring independent condensing and scrubbing systems for the rich and lean gases.

Although from purely theoretical considerations, condensing in four or more stages is preferable, it was decided to do all the cooling in each system in two stages, thus greatly simplifying the plant and correspondingly reducing its cost. Four washer cooler condensers were therefore installed, a primary and a secondary being supplied for both rich and lean gas systems. As the two condensing systems are exactly alike, one description will suffice for both.

The general arrangement of the condensing apparatus is shown in the diagram, Fig. 1. The gas comes from the hydraulic mains through the foul main A, to the primary washer-cooler, which it enters at the nozzle B. A by-pass C is provided which may be used by withdrawing a slip blank at D and inserting slip blanks at E and H. The gas enters the gas space F and passes up through the narrow gas passages between the boards or slats which comprise the grids G, (which are shown in detail in Fig. 2), where it is cooled and scrubbed by direct contact with weak ammonia liquor which flows down over the surface of the grids. The gas leaves the primary cooler at the top nozzle H and is conducted through the main A1 to the secondary cooler through which it passes in the same way.

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