Electricity from Coal

The Dynelectron and Other Carbon Batteries — A Long Series of Failures — Attempts by Tesla and Edison — The Probability of Eventual Success.

The revolutionary character and vast financial possibilities of a practical commercial battery producing electricity directly from coal, without the intervention of boiler and steam engine, is obvious enough to the merest tyro in mechanics. Theoretically, such a coal battery might have an efficiency of something like 70 per cent., whereas existing methods of producing electrical energy, according to W. R. Cooper, only render available 6 per cent. of the energy of the coal. This fact, combined with the possibility of greatly reducing the cost of an electric plant, through the elimination of engines, boilers, and a number of the skilled workmen necessary to keep them in running order, makes the coal battery an intensely fascinating problem for the inventor.

However, despite the numerous attempts made to solve it, only dismal failure has hitherto been the result. The latest of these is called by its inventor, J. H. Reid of Newark, N. J., the dynelectron. This machine and Mr. Reid himself are described at considerable length in the October number of the Marconigram. From the facts stated there the dynelectron seems to be, in its essentials, an iron box divided into three compartments. In two of these caustic soda is placed. The central one contains the ends of a number of hollow and porous carbon rods, which project through the two partition walls into the caustic soda. By means of a pump air is forced from the central chamber through the carbon rods into the caustic soda, from which it bubbles into the atmosphere.

Until heat is applied beneath the box nothing happens, but as soon as the latter is raised to over 330 degrees Fahrenheit it begins to generate electric current of an intensity slightly less than one volt.

As far back as 1896 W. W. Jacques described a carbon battery similar to this, except that the air, instead of being forced through hollow carbon rods, was liberated in the caustic soda directly beneath the carbon element, and allowed to bubble up around it. Great claims were made by Mr. Jacques regarding the revolutionary character of his invention, and it was considerably talked about and discussed in scientific circles, but nothing of practical value apparently ever came of it. A later cell devised by Blumenberg, a modification of the Jacques battery, also proved to be of only theoretic interest.

Whether Mr. Reid's modification of the carbons and his use of iron oxide instead of magnesia as a preservative of the caustic soda will suffice to make the battery a practical commercial device may be doubted. The discussion of its chemistry is not always clear, and some other features of the descriptive article rather dispose the reader to skepticism. Such paragraphs as the following are open to considerable criticism, from the scientific point of view, on the score of ambiguity, if for nothing else: "Briefly, the dynelectron is an engine for the extraction from the three elements — heat, water, and air — of unlimited electrical power."

It would be of considerable interest to know the names "of some of the highest scientific authorities of America" who have said that the "discovery of the dynelectron is the greatest since the discovery of the application of steam to the development of motive power."

Ever since the discovery of electricity attempts have been made to generate it commercially in various curious ways. In 1822 Seebeck discovered that a current is produced when two dissimilar metals in contact are heated. This fact has been the basis of a number of machines for directly turning heat into electricity, none of which, needless to say, has proved commercially practicable. Sir W. G. Armstrong about 1840 built his so-called hydro-electric machine, in which electricity was generated by the friction of escaping steam in wooden nozzles. He obtained sparks from five to ten feet long, but nothing practical came of it.

The fact that when a magnet is heated to a red heat it looses its magnetism, and that any variation of magnetic influence on a conducting body develops electrical energy, was used by Tesla in constructing his pyro-magnetic generator. In 1887 Edison built a machine on this principle, capable of developing electrical energy to the extent of three-horse power.

C. J. Reed in 1896 devised an ingenious generator, in which the voltaic action was produced by the reaction of sulphurous acid, and sulphuretted hydrogen in the presence of carbon.

Until the dynelectron is seriously discussed by competent engineering and electrical experts who have no interest in its financial exploitation, the investing public has nothing but Mr. Reid's naturally roseate expectations upon which to base a judgment.

In 1901 W. R. Cooper closed a discussion of the general subject of coal batteries as follows: "These various attempts to solve the fascinating problem of the direct production of electrical energy direct from carbon are very interesting from the scientific standpoint, but the results are discouraging, and the difficulties to be overcome appear to be so numerous that there does not seem to be any very great hope that commercial success will be achieved, at least at present."

V. J. Y.