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36
period, which allowed owners and occupiers to make the necessary
alterations after due notice.
Smoke Nuisance.
In November, 1905, proceedings under the Public Health (London)
Act, were taken against the Underground Electric Railways of London
Company, Ltd., for the emission of black smoke from the chimneys of
the Company's electricity generating station at Lots-road. The
magistrates convicted, and inflicted a fine of £10 with £2 2s. costs.
As this generating station is probably the forerunner of many that
will be established in London or its vicinity for the supply of electric
current in bulk for motive power, a short description may be of interest.
The building is an immense structure of steel girders and brickwork
on the North bank of the Thames at Lots-road. It contains 64 Babcock
and Willcox furnaces with revolving endless cast-iron chain grates, and
automatic overhead slotted stokers for supplying the furnaces with soft
coal. Each furnace has an incandescent combustion chamber at its
front, the coal being fed on to the hot plate over the clinker hearth.
The boilers are multitubular with steam drum overhead, and are fed
with water at about 270° F. from the vertical tubes of Green's
economisers, over which the furnace gases pass before entering the
chimney flues. The vertical tubes of the economisers are scraped
automatically by ascending and descending scrapers to prevent soot
accumulations on the tubes. The furnaces and boilers are on the two
upper floors of the building—32 on each floor. From 700 to 1,000 tons
of coal per day will be consumed when the station is at full work.
There are four chimneys, each 275 feet in height and 19 feet internal
diameter at chimney top. There are eight turbine steam engines for
generating current. The draught in the furnaces is regulated by
dampers at various points. The steam is condensed under vacuum in
the basement, where the condensers are placed, the water for condensing
being pumped in from intakes near the centre of the bed of the river,
and discharged at the same spot. All coal is hoisted by machinery to
the top of the building, and fed direct from the bunkers to the automatic
stokers.
It is evident from the description that this class of furnace is not
designed for, nor can it use Welsh or any form of hard, smokeless, steam
coal. The heat generated by the use of such fuel would rapidly destroy
the cast-iron chain grates. Consequently, the Company use a soft coal,
which, unless burned with the aid of smoke-preventing appliances, as at
Lots-road, generates smoke in large quantities. Owing to the immense
quantity of fuel required to run the works, coal is obtained from a
variety of collieries; and as the quality of the coal from different pits
varies, some descriptions being more suitable for the furnaces than
others, it is probable that this fact to some extent accounts for the
emission of black smoke at times from the chimneys. There is also the
difficulty caused by the varying load, furnaces having to be kept banked
in case of an emergency ; these have to be suddenly brought into action
when required, necessarily generating much smoke, if quickly pressed to
increase the head of steam.
Although during the past year a great deal of black smoke, at times