Safehold's coal sources

JeffEngel wrote:

doug941 wrote:As volatile as fire vine is supposed to be, I could see a use in steam powered vessels. Load your boilers with coal then top them off with fire vine "fireplace logs." The heat from them would bring the coal and water temperatures up much faster than normal. Storage on-board ship could be handled in a manner like tank shell storage. Individual spaces surrounded by water with blowout vents if needed. Manufacture would be handled in shops spaced like munitions bunkers instead of the "Big Shop" layout.

It's a use and it addresses volatility issues. But the smoke from it is going to be especially poisonous. Blowers help, but you'll still have a portion of it stuck in a small steel box with your crew day in and out.

Not arguing your point but several counterpoints. Each fire vine log could be coated with wax and/or varnish which should cut down on toxicity issues. Second, any decent boiler setup will be using forced draught which by its nature will remove smoke and fumes from the ship. Combination of heat rising and overpressure in the boiler rooms took care of most smoke/fumes here on Earth.

JeffEngel wrote:There's Glacierheart, obviously. I was wondering if anyone else recalled major coal mining locations, or had reasonable speculations about them. The steam engines are going to be mighty hungry for them.

Well - assuming they're all running on coal, anyway. Safehold's got a variety of oil fuels too, including as I recall one that's grown. Would any of them be practical alternatives anywhere?

Better question: What kind of coal? Lignite, Bituminous, Semi-Bituminous, Semi-Anthracite or Dry Anthracite? The coal from different localities and from different seams in any given locality also differs in its properties, especially in its specific gravity and in the amount of slate and bone mixed with it. Regarding Coke, mid 19th century processing (the infamous Beehive coke oven) needed to be low in sulfur to make a high-quality iron, and, to support proper combustion, it needed to have the size and strength to resist crushing under the weight of ore and limestone in the blast furnace. Heretofore, low-sulfur coals had not yielded coke with the desired structural qualities and coals yielding the desired structural qualities were high in sulfur. Only the discovery in the Connellsville region of low-sulfur coal which yielded a coke with the desired structural qualities made it possible to produce higher-quality iron at a cost still well below that of pig iron made with charcoal.

And exactly this is one of the advantages of the by-product coke oven: Perhaps the most significant factor favoring the expansion of the blast furnace industry was the fact that coals from various sources could be gathered together at a large, centrally located by-product plant and mixed together to produce better coke oven charge. The Chicago district, for instance, could import Pocahontas coal from West Virginia or Connellsville coal and mix it with inferior Illinois coal to produce excellent coke. Used separately, the Illinois coal could not produce an acceptable blast furnace fuel.

For example, in "Kingdom of Coal" the authors point out that as early as 1812-1813 Baltimore was consuming 7,000 to 10,000 tons of coal annually (in 1820 New York had about 150,000 residents, Philly about 64,000). By 1840, anthracite production had reached 864,000 tons annually.

Mid 19th century Pittsburgh was consuming 400,000 tons annually for home-heating alone

doug941 wrote:
Not arguing your point but several counterpoints. Each fire vine log could be coated with wax and/or varnish which should cut down on toxicity issues. Second, any decent boiler setup will be using forced draught which by its nature will remove smoke and fumes from the ship. Combination of heat rising and overpressure in the boiler rooms took care of most smoke/fumes here on Earth.

Or you could just charge a still with the vines and extract the volatiles, distill the fractions for what is useful and burn the residual to power the process. Chipping the material would make this more efficient. Similar processes are used when making paper from pine, the separated turpentine is a useful and salable by product. (Fire vine paper would be another alternative too - possibly too toxic for insects to eat...)
Sugar cane mills would be an equivalent process, if you could find a use for the excess crushed pulp, burning it for power generates an excess energy (so unless you deliberately design inefficient boilers (done historically in the sugar industry)) you need another industry needing the available excess steam. (Colonial Sugar Refining Co. (CSR) (csr.com.au) got into the building industry making wall panels from excess sugar cane pulp and marketed under the brand Canite).
Palm oil mills would also be comparable.

doug941 wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:...
I think oil tree oil (it comes from the seeds) might serve some purpose that way. But when it's traditionally used for lamp oil only in the mainland realms (LAMA references by way of the wiki), I get the hunch that it may be too hard to keep up a good enough crop of it to sustain major fuel usages. Still, it may be a useful niche element and the fact that it's renewable warms my heart. (Although Safehold isn't going to exhaust or badly dent any fossil fuels before they can resume the safe use of fusion power or even wide-scale solar, hydroelectric, wind, and geothermal.)

Fire vine does grow very quickly, so it's likely to be far more easily, cheaply, and practically renewable than oil tree products. But it's also dangerously flammable and toxic. If they could make semi-safe use of it as a fuel source, it'd be awesome - that's just one big and horrible if.

As volatile as fire vine is supposed to be, I could see a use in steam powered vessels. Load your boilers with coal then top them off with fire vine "fireplace logs." The heat from them would bring the coal and water temperatures up much faster than normal. Storage on-board ship could be handled in a manner like tank shell storage. Individual spaces surrounded by water with blowout vents if needed. Manufacture would be handled in shops spaced like munitions bunkers instead of the "Big Shop" layout.

Volatility and released heat content are not necessarily related. Especially in non-forced air environments or non carbeurated/non fuel-injected environments. From David's description it burns oily and sooty. I don't think that is especially good in an open firebox.

jgnfld wrote:

doug941 wrote:...


As volatile as fire vine is supposed to be, I could see a use in steam powered vessels. Load your boilers with coal then top them off with fire vine "fireplace logs." The heat from them would bring the coal and water temperatures up much faster than normal. Storage on-board ship could be handled in a manner like tank shell storage. Individual spaces surrounded by water with blowout vents if needed. Manufacture would be handled in shops spaced like munitions bunkers instead of the "Big Shop" layout.

Volatility and released heat content are not necessarily related. Especially in non-forced air environments or non carbeurated/non fuel-injected environments. From David's description it burns oily and sooty. I don't think that is especially good in an open firebox.

I don't remember how fire vine is described in the books, but safehold.wikia describes it as being "Very high natural flammability." Granted that energy released by a burning fuel and how easily it is to start burning are not always related, many times they are. Even if it is not a high calorie fuel, the ease in which it takes off would act something like charcoal lighter fluid. As for actually using it in a boiler, most engine rooms would be setup under forced draught, meaning blowers are used to raise the air pressure in the boiler rooms above outside air pressure and airflow will always be from room to boiler to stack when fuel is lit.

RFC Mentioned a Coaling Station at Sampsons Island but was that a stockpile or a production point as well?

doug941 wrote:

jgnfld wrote:Volatility and released heat content are not necessarily related. Especially in non-forced air environments or non carbeurated/non fuel-injected environments. From David's description it burns oily and sooty. I don't think that is especially good in an open firebox.

I don't remember how fire vine is described in the books, but safehold.wikia describes it as being "Very high natural flammability." Granted that energy released by a burning fuel and how easily it is to start burning are not always related, many times they are. Even if it is not a high calorie fuel, the ease in which it takes off would act something like charcoal lighter fluid. As for actually using it in a boiler, most engine rooms would be setup under forced draught, meaning blowers are used to raise the air pressure in the boiler rooms above outside air pressure and airflow will always be from room to boiler to stack when fuel is lit.

I think the problem is the word volatile. You said "As volatile as fire vine is supposed to be", but we don't actually know that it is volatile; we just know it burns well. Flammable is a better word.

dwileye13 wrote:RFC Mentioned a Coaling Station at Sampsons Island but was that a stockpile or a production point as well?

Good question. The location would make it a good station for refuelling for steam vessels burning out Desnair's privateer bases, or for those taking the western route from the Empire to the Gulf of Dohlar. (I doubt it'd be the only one for that route though; one in the Barren Lands as well would almost be a minimum.)

Samson's Land has no known population (consistent with being as close as it is to Armageddon Reef), which would suggest there isn't infrastructure to support large-scale mining there, especially not for a bulk product like coal.

JeffEngel wrote:

dwileye13 wrote:RFC Mentioned a Coaling Station at Sampsons Island but was that a stockpile or a production point as well?

Good question. The location would make it a good station for refuelling for steam vessels burning out Desnair's privateer bases, or for those taking the western route from the Empire to the Gulf of Dohlar. (I doubt it'd be the only one for that route though; one in the Barren Lands as well would almost be a minimum.)

Samson's Land has no known population (consistent with being as close as it is to Armageddon Reef), which would suggest there isn't infrastructure to support large-scale mining there, especially not for a bulk product like coal.

For a needed resource, like coal, building that infrastructure would be worth it.

Along with Samson's Land, EoC should take Hammer Island, Westbreak Island, all the gulf of Dohlar islands.

Some carrot and stick diplomacy with the cities on Greentree Island and Barren Land should easily bring them under the control of the EoC.

Speaking of being close to Armageddon Reef, the EoC should claim that territory as well. You know Shan-Wei didn't put her enclave there in a vacuum. I bet some very important resources are located on that continent and the surrounding islands.

Plus, no one else would even think about contesting the EoC, now, for control of it.