Book Description

Excerpt from Elementary Chemistry for Coal-Mining Students For many years I have delivered both popular and more or less systematic courses of lectures to deputies and other workers in coal mines, students who have little or no knowledge of chemistry but are keenly desirous of learning something of the subject which may be useful to them in their daily occupation. The ordinary text-book of chemistry does not meet their requirements, for it contains much that it is unnecessary for them to study, and much that it is desirable for them to know is not to be found in it. The present work has been prepared with the object of meeting the wants of these as well as of other students of coal-mining. It is really a compilation of those parts of chemistry, pure and applied, that are cognate to the coal-mining industry, and does not pretend to be a text-book of chemistry. Its arrangement is based on the plan I have adopted in my lectures, namely, to divide the subject into two parts. The first part includes the description of those elements that enter into the composition of coal, among the compounds of which are found all the gases and most of the principal substances met with in coal mines. In this part a certain amount of necessary chemical theory is introduced. The first nine chapters are devoted to this part and in them special attention has been given to such subjects as irrespirable and extinctive atmospheres, the occurrence and detection of poisonous gases and their action on the animal system, the safety lamp and its use in the detection of fire-damp, the hygrometer and its use. The second part is included in the next four chapters and treats of the chemistry of coal and coke, the coking process, by-products and their recovery, explosives, explosions of gases and coal dust. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.