Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers Volume 34

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ... each gauze, which showed in the glass so that if the two tabs were not seen there was evidence that the gauzes were not in the lamp. Mr. W. H. Coleman read the following paper on "Byeproducts from Coke-ovens " --Trans. Intt. M. E., 1907, vol. xxxiv., page 321. The exhaustion of our coal supply is proceeding at such a rapid rate that it is necessary to take care that the energy contained in every ton of coal should be utilized to the fullest extent possible, not perhaps that the pinch may be felt in our own time, but because it is our duty to leave as much of our heritage of power as possible to our descendants. The increase in the population of the world is a warning that the question of food supply will be an urgent one in the near future. We have for years been existing upon the stored up wealth of the virgin soils of America and other sparsely-peopled districts, but this cannot go on for ever, and the continued abstraction of plant food from the soil must be compensated for in some way or other. The two most important ingredients permanently removed from the soil by the crops are phosphorus and nitrogen. With the former the writer does not propose to deal in these notes, but he intends to confine his remarks to the latter as being closely concerned with one of the chief bye-products of coke manufacture, namely, sulphate of ammonia, which is at present the only practicable means of returning to the soil the nitrogen which has been abstracted by the crops. No doubt the deposits of nitrate of soda in South America have to a large extent supplied up to the present time the demand, but they are being rapidly exhausted at an ever increasing rate, and until the production of nitrogen-compounds from the air can be accomplished at a reasonable cost, th...