agasse available as a fuel, and
led to demands upon the furnace beyond its capacity.

With the improvements in the manufacture, planters had been compelled to
make enormous sacrifices to change radically their systems, and the
heavy disbursement necessary for mill apparatus left few in a financial
position to make costly installations of good furnaces. The necessity of
turning to something cheap in furnace construction but which was
nevertheless better than the early method of burning the fuel dry led to
the invention of numerous furnaces by all classes of engineers
regardless of their knowledge of the subject and based upon no
experience. None of the furnaces thus produced were in any sense
inventions but were more or less barefaced infringements of the patents
of The Babcock & Wilcox Co. As the company could not protect its rights
without hurting its clients, who in many cases against their own will
were infringing upon these patents, and as on the other hand they were
anxious to do something to meet the wants of the planters, a series of
experiments were started, at their own rather than at their customers'
expense, with a view to developing a furnace which, without being as
expensive, would still fulfill all the requirements of the manufacturer.
The result was the cold blast green bagasse furnace which is now
offered, and it has been adopted as standard for this class of work
after years of study and observation in our installations in the sugar
countries of the world. Such a furnace is described later in considering
the combustion of bagasse.

Composition and Calorific Value of Bagasse--The proportion of fiber
contained in the cane and density of the juice are important factors in
the relation the bagasse fuel will have to the total fuel necessary to
generate the steam required in a mill's operation. A cane rich in wood
fiber produces more bagasse than a poor one and a thicker juice is
subject to a higher degree of dilution than one not so rich.

Besides the percentage of bagasse in the cane, its physical condition
has a bearing on its calorific value. The factors here entering are the
age at which the cane must be cut, the locality in which it is grown,
etc. From the analysis of any sample of bagasse its approximate
calorific value may be calculated from the formula,

8550F + 7119S + 6750G - 972W
B. t. u. per pound bagasse = ---------------------------- (22)