There is a fourth boiler, designed and built for testing purposes by the
Quartermaster’s Department. This is a tubular boiler designed on the
lines of a house-heating boiler, but for use as a calorimeter to
determine the relative heat value of different fuels reduced to the
basis of a standard cord of oak wood.
A series of research tests on the processes of combustion is being
conducted in Building No. 13, by Mr. Henry Kreisinger. These tests are
being made chiefly in a long combustion chamber (Figs. 16 and 17, and
Figs. 1 and 2, Plate XVIII), which is fed with coal from a Murphy
mechanical stoker, and discharges the hot gases at the rear end of the
combustion chamber, into the hand-fired Heine boiler. The walls and roof
of this chamber are double; the inner wall is 9 in. thick, of
fire-brick; the outer one is 8 in. thick, and is faced with red pressed
brick. Between the walls of the sides there is a 2-in. air space, and
between them on the roof a 1-in. layer of asbestos paste is placed. The
inner walls and roof have three special slip-joints, to allow for
expansion. The floor is of concrete, protected by a 1½-in. layer of
asbestos board, which in turn is covered by a 3-in. layer of earth; on
top of this earth there is a 4-in. layer of fire-brick (not shown in the
drawings).
[Illustration: Fig. 16.