FUTURE LINERS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13791, 26 October 1908, Page 8

FUTURE LINERS.

THE LATEST PROPHECY. ' 7

.SUCTION GAS AS DERIVING AGENT.

Tliree years ago' an, English journalist asked the chief engineer of a large 1 liter Svhat ho tbovigkt \eould b© the motiv© power of the future— steam or electricity.- The reply was, "Neither; suction gas," whereupon- the journalist i had to inquire what suctipn gas was. Suction gas has been used successfully on land for the last three years, but most people are* in the same sta,te of ignorance about it asj w,as. the journalist. Yet there is. more th^n a possibility of it revolutionising marine propulsion. The Daily Mail give&'an interesting account of the experiments which have been made with it oh the Rattler, an obsolete warship. The gas is ..prepared by passing Water and air through "a furnace in which coal or coke isi burnt, and the gas produced, after being cooled and cleaned by 1 its 'passage' through a "scrubber" filled with damp; coke, is stidked or drawn off by the! e**ine just as it is required for .driving it., Only so much gas as is wanted td toed the engine is thus produced. The Rattler, a clumsy old vessel, very foul, was when the writer 1 visited her, driven by, a suction gas engine at the rate of nearly eleven knots, at a cost in fuel of threepence a mile. • , * . A ship driven by this power has no boilers, and no funnels, and is driven smokelessly and noiselessly. Stoking, as we know it now, is done away with, the furnace requiring attention only about once an hour. "On hoard this vessel really the/c is no stokehole. There is a huge, airy compartment, with two 'or three great upright cylinders -in it, - not at all hot, and quite clean, and I free also from many other objectionable concomitants of stokeholes generally, especially the hideous uproar. .Here there are- only a deep, recurring cough , — the exhausts— which may b& heard %y putting the ear to tho side of the cylinder, ' and a couple of men standing about with a somewhat blase air, as if really in need of occupation. ; if the suction gas engine only does, aw ay with the stoker it will deserve to rank with the, most humane of scientific achievements." Cheap coal can bo used in place of good steam coal, and with the same amount of coal consumption Si per ent * mqre P owe T fe obtained. What with experiments in suction gas and gasolene engines for large vessels, rfc looks as if the day may not be far distant when.thej internal combustion engine will be king of the seven seas.