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Show REMINISCENCES ON FURNACES AND HEAT TRANSFER, AND COMMENTS ON OXYGEN-ENRICHED EMISSIVITIES OF FLAME GASES· Hoyt C. Hottel Fuel Research Laboratory, Dept. of Chemical Engineering M.I.T. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Reminiscences on Furnaces and Heat Transfer, and Comments on Oxygen-enrTChea-rmissivities of Flame Gases* Hoyt C. Hottel Fuel Research Laboratory, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, M. I. T .. ,Cambridge, Ma. It is for me a great pleasure to attend a meeting scheduled for papers with titles on such live subjects, to renew acquaintances with friends of many years, to come back from Bostrn to a town in which I grew up. A weakness of those you call old is a tendency to excessive reminiscence. But meetings like this need a few light spots. Be indulgent with me while I recall just one of the vivid pictures I have of early youth in Chicago, the story-believe it or not-of my service in World War I. I was a Boy Scout in Chi cago when, sixtynine years ago, we got into the War and set up an Officers' Training Camp at Fort Sheridan on the Northsho~e Line from Chicago to Milwaukee. By contests in the 100 or so Boy Scout Troops of Chicago, a group of about 30 Scouts were chosen to serve as orderlies, at Fort Sheridan, th the captains of the Companies set up to train the incoming officer candidates. To prepare us, at the beginning of our ~our of duty, for service as orderlies, a scoutmaster at our headquarters gave us a shortened but impassioned version of "Carrying the Message to Garcia". Theme: if you accept a responsibility, carry it out no matter what!I was sold. The next week the Captain to whom I was assigned, in a thoughtless early afternoon moment, said he would like me to get him a captain's whistle, a small nickel-plated gadget emitting a characteristic high tone that says "Attention;the captain calls". I rushed off to the PX; no whistle. So I got on the Interurban, canvasses novelty stores,stationery store~ five-and-ten, hardware, and other stores in almost every town on the line,-Wilmette, Winnetka, Highland Park, etc. It began to rain, darkness came, the stores closed, and I had to return ill 3 the captain and report "No whistle". He was clearly embarrassed and apologized for his thoughtless reauest. But at Scout Headquarters I got balled out for not reporting before curfew. Moral: Accept responsibility, but identify futility if it enters! The assignment to me of a title of this presentation was something I had nothing to do with. When Jordan Loftus asked me to talk, I said I was too busy. getting a series of lectures ready for a trip to China. He suggested my giving you pieces of my China stuff and I finally agreed to say something, but with no title.When the announcement of this meetin9 arrived,I found a title assiqned me; it was news. Lookinq thru ,'our many interesting titles I decided to nrepare somethin~ on the effect of oxygen enrichment on combustion ~as emissivity. But day before yesterday I decided I should pay some attention to my assiqned title, and started to dredge up memories -of my past in the combustion and heat transfer areas, mostly to illustrate how slowly we crawl upward. What I say wil1.show no effect of literature search, and consequently will be excessively personally slanted. I shall end by trying for your pardon in exchange for a bit of exposition on the oxygen-enriched flame emissivity problem. My first contact with furnaces was at MIT's Chemical Engineering Practice School Station at the Lackawanna plant of Bethlehem Steel in Jan., 1924. That Fall I went back to the steel plant for a vear's work, became interested in furnaces, and became involved in tests on a billet-reheating furnace for the rolling mill. I found that an MIT SC.D.man of two years before, to flesh out his thesis on flame structure, had run tests on reheating furnaces and rerorted his results in the form of an overall first-power heat transfer coefficier.t, gas to steel, for the whole f~rD2£~~_1_~D§~_~b2~_r2gi2~iQD~_DQ~_£QDY~£~iQD~ *Introductory paper, Chicago Symposium on Industrial Combustion Technology, April 29, 1986 |