Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/174

162 I will now burn in the same way some buckwheat, which, as you will observe, gives a very large blaze; now some corn-meal, which is too coarse to burn as well; now some rye-flour, which burns much better



than the corn; now some oatmeal, the finer part of which only burns; and so I might continue with all sorts of finely-ground vegetable material.

Let us take up now the products of the manufacture of flour from wheat. There were between three and four hundred tons of these materials, upon which I am now to experiment, in the Washburn Mill at the time of explosion, and there was a corresponding amount in the Diamond and Humboldt Mills, which, by their sudden burning, produced the second and third shocks heard directly following the explosion of the larger mill.

The wheat is first placed in a machine where it is rattled violently and brushed. At the same time a strong draught of air passes through it, taking up all the fine dust, straw, etc., and conveying it through a spout to a room known as the wheat-dust room, or perhaps more commonly it is blown directly out of the mill.

You see some of this material here; it looks like the wood-dust of the first experiment, and, as you see, burns with a quick and sudden flash when subjected to the same conditions.

Here, then, we have the first source of danger in a flour-mill. A thick cloud of this dust, when conveyed through a spout by air, will burn in an instant if it takes fire; and, if there is any considerable amount of dust, as there would be if there were a dust-room, an explosion will follow which may become general if it stirs up a thick dust-cloud throughout the mill.

The wheat after it has been cleaned in this way goes to the crushers, which are plain or fluted iron or porcelain rollers, working like the rollers in a rolling-mill. The object of these rollers is, I believe, to break off the bran in as large pieces as possible, and to crush out or flatten the germ so that it can be separated with the bran from the rest of the meal.

The crushed wheat goes now to the stones, where so much heat is produced (average 135° Fahr.) that a large amount of steam is formed