EXPLOSIVE PROPERTIES OF FLOUR.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1165, 3 October 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

EXPLOSIVE PROPERTIES OF FLOUR.

Professor Tobin, of Louisville, Kentucky, has for some time been engaged in studying the explosive qualities possessed by dust of various kind, particularly wood, coal and flour. Recently he delivered a lecture on the subject which considerably astonished the worthy millers who had assembled to hear him. The audience manifested Mne incredulity, and the lecturer was Requested to try several samples of flour selected by them, the result being always in his favor. Finally he asked if anyone present had in his possession some flour, and the President, Mr Potts, of Richmond, handed a sample box lot of his best production. Professor Tobin, placing this into his apparatus, produced a greater flash from it than in previous cases, amidst a round of applause. The millers were convinced by the brilliant experiments that their mills are a near relative to powder magazines, nitro-gly-cerine storehouses. Nihilist bombs, &c. Professor Tobin dwelt at length upon the subject of explosions in flourmills, particularly on the terrible catastrophe at Minneapolis, by which three huge mills were levelled to the ground in a few seconds, and concluded as follows :—“ I cannot refrain from asking your attention to a fact that has appeared to my mind again and again. Perchance it may throw light on the prime cause of these disasters, and suggest means for their prevention. It known that fine flour will absorb moisture and deprive the atmosphere of its natural humidity. The air of a flourmills is usually very dry. Could we have a register of the state of the atmosphere in the unfortunate Washburn mills immediately preceding the explosion, I doubt not that it would have shown a marked absence of humidity. I bring now before you a little instrument that can be purchased at any optician’s store for a few dollars. Its modest title is the ‘ wet-bulb thermometer,’ and it shows at a glance how much moisture the atmosphere of any place contains at any given time. I recommend the placing of these iu mills, and a constant watch kept upon their indications. Should the air become dry abnormally from either natural or artificial causes, inject live steam from your boilers into the open mill, into the shafts and elsewhere, and in a few minutes the thermometer will tell the story of safety. J. am told by competent millers that a moist atmosphere is conducing to making a whiter and better grade of flour. If so, it is desirable to acquire such on this account only, but in addition to this you evade one cause, if not the prime cause, of explosion and destruction.”