FRANKLIN INSTITUTE LIBRARY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 Class 6 (o S^ ,^.. Book Accession 
 
 Given by \m...:XY\.0.:t:.>r.K.S......HJbe 
 
weprinted from 
 
 TThe Enoineerino Record. 
 
 THE 
 
 European Cement Industry 
 
 FREDERICK H." LEWIS 
 
 M. AM. SOC. C, E. 
 
 New York 
 The Ensineerino Record- 
 
 1869 
 
PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 
 
 Early in the year 1897, " The Engineering Record " began 
 the publication of a series of articles upon the European 
 Portland Cement Industry. The articles were prepared espe- 
 cially for this journal by Mr. Frederick H. Lewis, M. Am. Soc. 
 C. E., who undertook, in the interest of this inquiry, a personal 
 inspection of the important European plants, and who, from 
 his familiarity with the subject, was well qualified to compare 
 foreign with American practice. The plants then described 
 were the works of Hilton, Anderson, Brooks & Co., at Grays, 
 Essex, and the Francis works at Cliffe, the North Works at 
 Beerse, the Alsen, Laegerdorfer & Hemmoor plants near Ham- 
 burg, the Hanover Works at Misburg, and Heyn Brothers' plant 
 at Lueneburg, the Dyckerhoff Works at Amoeneburg, Mann- 
 heimer Works at Weisenau, and Mannheim & Schifferdecker 
 Works at Heidelberg, German Cement Kilns, the works of 
 Darsy, Lefebvre, Stenne & Lavocat at Neuchatel, and the works 
 of E. Candlot & Cie., at Dennemont. 
 
 As the issues containing the articles have now been exhausted 
 and the demand for them still continues, it has been decided to 
 republish them in this form, with some additional illustrations. 
 
EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTEY. 
 
 The most interesting fact at this time in regard to Portland 
 cement in England is that the manufacturers have awakened to 
 the necessity of improving their products. For twenty years meth- 
 ods of manufacture in England have remained practically un- 
 changed, and the product changed as little as the methods. Port- 
 land cement was discovered by an Englishman; it got its name in 
 England and for a quarter of a century its manufacture was 
 wholly an English industry. The traditional policy of the man- 
 ufacturers toward foreign trade has therefore been simply this: 
 " ?Iere is our cement as it has always been made; you can take 
 it or leave it, for we make nothing else." 
 
 With the rise of the German cement industry, many foreign 
 buyers have accepted the alternative, and German cements have 
 displaced the English product in many export markets and quite 
 generally command a premium in price. This appears to have 
 gone on without action in England until about two years ago, 
 when the cement industry reached a crisis of small sales, little 
 or no profit and financial stringency. Since then there have been 
 large consolidations of interests, a better understanding in the 
 trade, and a live interest among progressive men in studying the 
 demands of export markets. 
 
 To American minds it must appear most extraordinary that 
 manufacturers in England should have seen trade slipping away 
 for years, and from sheer conservatism have been unwilling to 
 take any steps to stop a loss both of business and of prestige. 
 The real fact is that there have been several factors at work 
 to bring about this state of affairs. The Englishman is conserva- 
 tive, but no one who knows the shrewdness of English business 
 men can believe that they have let business decline from mere 
 
 7 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 obstinacy. Two other factors which have contributed to the re- 
 sult described above are: 1. the conduct of manufacturing under 
 land leases. 2. the obstinacj'-, not to say pig-headedness, of the 
 English laboring classes. 
 
 The fabric of English law has been accumulating for cen- 
 turies, much of it yet uncodified, and it is a veritable maze, which 
 Dickens declared to be inexplicable until viewed from one stand- 
 point. When you consider it as a device for making business for 
 lawyers, the whole thing at once becomes perfectly clear. It is 
 a real bar to change to an extent which is hardly realized in 
 America, and in manufacturing as well as in agriculture, it evi- 
 dently makes the improvement of leased property a matter for 
 serious consideration. 
 
 The stubbornness of English labor in adhering to time- 
 honored methods, and the power of the labor unions and of 
 the close trades has often been commented on before. While the 
 labor in England is energetic — " smart " — it evidently has more 
 power and is harder to deal with than in either America or the 
 continent of Europe. In a comparatively close industry like 
 cement making, with the traditions of sixty years behind it, it 
 evidently requires unusual vigor and determination to enforce 
 new methods of work. 
 
 At this writing this change of policy, inaugurated two years 
 ago, has resulted in two changes of manufacture. The first is in 
 putting finely ground cement on the market. It used to be 
 considered quite good enough in England to grind cement so 
 there should be a residue not exceeding 10 per cent, on a No. 50 
 sieve (Am. Soc. C. E. standard). Such cement gave good re- 
 sults in tests of neat briquettes, but when tested as in Germany 
 and America in mixtures of 1 cement to 3 sand, the results 
 were at least 30 per cent, to 40 per cent, below the figures ob- 
 tained from finely ground cements. The sand-carrying capacity 
 was essential, but was not there. 
 
 To show what English manufacturers are now prepared to do, 
 the following figures of a recent lot of cement shipped to Amer- 
 ica are here given: 
 
 99.9 per eent. passes No. 50 sieve. 
 95.0 • " " 100 
 
 78.0 " " " " 200 " 
 
 These figures are in excess of any standard for fine grinding 
 
 8 
 
THE EUROPEAN GEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 which has come to the writer's attention, and mark a really- 
 important improvement in quality. 
 
 The second improvement is in making cement with a set- 
 ting- time to suit the conditions under which it is to be used.. 
 The old idea that a cement which was good enough for England 
 was good enough for anybody is found to be an assumption which 
 is neither true nor reasonable. It proves to be a fact that a ce- 
 ment which in the moist, cool climate of England will set in,, 
 say, 45 minutes, and which can be satisfactorily used there for any 
 purpose, will in the warm, dry atmosphere of an American sum- 
 mer set in from two to five minutes and be quite unfit for laying 
 sidewalks, or for any but rapid work. From a careful compari- 
 son of data in England and on the Continent the writer finds that, 
 cements leaving Europe with a setting time of from five to eight 
 hours will in America set in less than half these periods. Such' 
 changes appear to be quite marked even in winter, when the cli- 
 matic differences are not great; but they are, of course, much 
 more marked in summer. Even with very great care very queer 
 changes in setting time take place in Portland cements, and the 
 most experienced manufacturers are occasionally nonplussed to 
 account for them. These facts have been receiving great atten- 
 tion from at least two leading English manufacturers in the last 
 two years, and they now declare themselves ready to furnish what- 
 ever their customers may desire in this respect. 
 
 Taken in conjunction with the fine raw material of the Thames 
 and Medway, these two improvements evidently go a long way in^ 
 improving English cement. 
 
 The Woeks at Grats, Essex. 
 
 Through the courtesy of Messrs. Hilton, Anderson, Brooks & 
 Co., the writer had an opportunity to visit in detail their works at 
 Grays, under the guidance of the resident director, Mr. Alfred 
 Brooks. The present firm was formed by a union of the old' 
 firms of Hilton, Anderson & Co., and Brooks, Shoobridge & Co. 
 They have four plants, two of them small; the other two, at 
 Grays, on the Thames, and Hailing, on the Medway, are quite- 
 large plants. The firm produces annually about 800,000 barrels 
 of cement, and has the largest American trade of any English 
 house. 
 
 The works at Grays are directly on tlie Thames, pome- 
 
 9 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 22 miles below London, and are shown in plan in 
 the figure. Vessels of moderate draft can load directly at the 
 wharves. The clay comes from the mouth of the Medway, some 
 miles below, and is very expeditiously unloaded from the barges 
 by means of a clam-shell dredging bucket which is carried by a 
 7-ton jib crane. The crane runs on a high level track on the 
 wharf and drops its load into cars running at a lower level along- 
 
 7- Ton Traveling Crane 
 
 PLAN OF THE CEMENT WORKS, GRAYS, ESSEX. 
 
 •side the barge. It is by turns yellow or blue in color, but quite 
 pure and free from foreign matter. 
 
 The chalk quarry is in the hillside some three-quarters of a mile 
 back from the water front. Here there is a working face of 50 
 to 75 feet of white chalk, said to be 98 per cent, pure carbonate of 
 lime. It is quite soft, readily breaking in the fingers and readily 
 disintegrating in water in the wash mills. Its only drawback is 
 
 10 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 the flints, which occur in regular beds, some five or six feet apart, 
 and making clearly defined outcrops across the working face of the 
 quarry. 
 
 The process of mixing the raw material is the semi-dry, or Gor- 
 ham method. In this process the clay and chalk are thrown into 
 the wash mill and mixed in a rather thick slurry containing but 
 40 per cent, of water. On passing from the wash mill, the slurry 
 is ground wet between buhrstones and then goes directly to the 
 drying chambers of kilns of the Johnson type. The Johnson kiln, 
 it will be remembered, is simply an intermittent kiln having a 
 long drying chamber (or chambers) between the kiln and the 
 chimney. The wet slurry is thus dried by the products of com- 
 bustion of one charge, and the kiln is then recharged by simply 
 taking up the dried slurry in the chamber and placing it in the 
 
 SS^ The Enoineebino RECORD. 
 
 BROOKS-SHOOBKIDGK WHARF CRANE. 
 
 kiln. It is evident that a process so simple and so direct could 
 only be carried out with very pure and imiform raw materials. 
 The fuel used is coke from the London gas works. 
 
 The balance of the works are much the same as at all other 
 cement manufactories. The crushing and grinding machinery 
 for the clinker, the stock-house and loading and shipping depart- 
 ments, differ only in details at different plants. 
 
 Two' things of notable excellence about the plant are the power- 
 house and the cooper shop. The engines are compound condens- 
 ing engines of the Corliss type, with rope transmission directly 
 
 11 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 i.vom the flywheel. This rope transmission is apparently held in 
 high esteem in Europe, the writer having found it in all the 
 ■cement plants he has visited. Usually the ropes are hemp and 1| 
 to 2 inches diameter. At Grays they are of special long fiber cot- 
 ton. There are about ten or twelve strands leading from the 
 "flywheel to the pulley on the main shaft of the mill, and they ap- 
 pear to be in first-class condition after a service of eleven years. 
 'They transmit 300 horse-power. 
 
 The cooper shop has a full complement of tools for turning out 
 barrels rapidly. One novel feature is the printing of the brand 
 •and label directly on the barrel heads. This is done in two over- 
 lays on each head and is evidently much better than paper labels 
 pasted on, which may or may not stay — often the latter. 
 
 The Francis Works at Cliffe. 
 
 The Francis cement is quite an old brand, having been well 
 ls:nown in America for twenty years. It has a prominent place in 
 a long series of experiments reported by Mr. W. W. Maclay, M. 
 Am. Soc. C. E., in a paper read before the Society in 1878. 
 
 The writer had the pleasure of visiting the works in company 
 with the resident director, Mr. Vitale de Michele, M. Inst. C. E. 
 They are situated on the south side of the Thames, in Kent, some 
 30 miles from London. They are three plants, one located di- 
 rectly in the chalk quarry, the other directly on the river front, 
 ■a mile away, and a third between these two points. 
 
 The chalk is all quarried in the first plant, while the unloading 
 ■of the clay (from the Medway) and the shipping is done at the 
 second. The raw materials are precisely the same as at Grays- 
 white chalk, Medway clay and London gas coke. The kilns are 
 of the same general type, and the only difPerence in process is that 
 at Clifi'e the raw materials are mixed with more water in the wash 
 mills instead of by the Gorham process of thick slurry and wet 
 grinding. The power plant here is also excellent. The works in 
 the chalk quarry present a most picturesque appearance, sur- 
 rounded by the high white walls of chalk. Indeed, the blacksmith 
 shops, stables and other minor offices are in excavations or caves 
 ■directly in the chalk cliff-, presenting a very unique appearance 
 inside and out. 
 
 These two works, as described above, fairly represent the Eng- 
 lish cement industry as it exists to-day. Pure raw materials, 
 
 ^2 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 «imple direct processes, and the absence of the Continental bureau 
 of " Controle/' are its characteristics. The natural advantages 
 possessed by English manufacturers on the Thames are evidently 
 very great, the location and shipping facilities, all things con- 
 sidered, perhaps unsurpassed anywhere in the world. What these 
 plants could do if remodelled on lines of the best modern practice 
 is evidently now the question for English manufacturers to con- 
 sider. American manufacturers would jump at such a chance 
 without a moment's hesitation. 
 
 The Noeth Works at Beerse, Belghjm. 
 
 In Belgium there are two distinct Portland cement industries. 
 These are known respectively as the artificial and the natural 
 Portland, cements. Each has a trade association, but the two as- 
 sociations have nothing in common. The artificial Portland ce- 
 ments are made by the standard processes of Germany and France, 
 and there are four manufactories— viz., North's Condor Cement 
 Works, at Beerse; Societe Anonyme de Niel-on-Euppel; Dufossey 
 & Henry, at Cronfestu; Levie Freres at Cronfestu. 
 
 The" latest of these manufactories is North's Works, at Beerse. 
 The largest is Niel-on-Euppel. North's Works have been built 
 within the last ten years, the capital being chiefly supplied by the 
 late Colonel North, the " Nitrate King," and the works being built 
 on the plans and under the general supervision of Dr. Wilhelm 
 Michaelis, of Berlin. It is interesting to note, however, that the 
 initiative in building the plant came from an American, Mr. Wil- 
 liam Schmole, formerly of Philadelphia. Mr. Schmole built the 
 works in association with Col. Alexis Mols, of Antwerp, the pres- 
 ent director of the works, and the business was originally con- 
 ducted under the name of Schmole & Co. 
 
 Having abundant capital, the plant was' intended to represent 
 the latest European practice, and is therefore very interesting to 
 see. This privilege the writer was fortunate enough to secure 
 through the good offices of the American agent of the firm, and 
 spent Saturday, February 6, 1897, at Beerse, where a party of five 
 gentlemen enjoyed the hospitahty of the Director, Col. Mols, and 
 saw the plant under his guidance. The general arrangement of 
 the plant is shown on the following page. 
 
 The first thing which strikes the visitor is the fact that the 
 works are built at the clay deposit instead of the chalk, as is usual. 
 
 13 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 Office 
 
 Laboratory 
 
 and 
 Store Housz. 
 
 |ooo| |ooo| 
 |ooo| |ooo[ 
 ^oo| |ooo| 
 |ooo| |ooo| 
 |ooo[ |ooo| 
 
 Dietzsch Kiln ' 
 Building. 
 
 Stock House . 
 
 Cooper Shop 
 
 Store house 
 and Club. ' 
 
 THE Engineering RECORO. 
 
 PfAN OF THE NORTH WORKS AT BKKRSE, BELGIUM, 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 The reasons wliicli appear to have dictated this management are, 
 first, proximity to Antwerp, and, second, the establishment of a 
 xerj large brick-works at Beerse by the cement company, which 
 it operates in conjunction with the cement plant. The first ten or 
 fifteen feet of the clay deposit makes admirable bricks, but is not 
 quite up to the required standard for cement purposes. All the 
 material taken out of the clay bank is thus profitably utilized, and 
 the two industries are conducted side by side by the same staff. 
 This clay is dark blue in color and very plastic, and the chalk 
 which comes from Vise is very similar in color and analysis to the 
 English chalk deposits. 
 
 In handling the raw materials the Continental bureau of " Con- 
 trole " is in entire authority. At the side of the wash mills are the 
 scales and by the scales a telephone to the laboratory. Hour by 
 hour if necessary the proportions of the materials going into the 
 wash mill are modified by telephone orders from the Bureau. The 
 method of working the raw materials is, as indicated above, by 
 the humid way, and this method is here seen in its fullest develop- 
 ment. It consists of five distinct processes, as follows: First, the 
 weighing of the raw materials. Second, the mixing of the raw 
 materials in the wash mills, where 60 to 80 per cent, of water is 
 added. Third, from the wash mills the slurry goes to millstones, 
 and is ground wet. Fourth, from the mills the slurry runs by 
 gravity to the bassins de dosage. These are large basins in 
 which the slurry is stirred by arbors similar to those in the wash 
 mills. From these basins samples are taken to the laboratory at 
 regular intervals by orders to the scalesman until the dosage is 
 quite correct. The stream of slurry from the mills is then turned 
 into another bassin de dosage. Fifth, from the bassins de do- 
 sage the slurry is pumped through a pipe line to the bassins 
 de repos, or bacs, which cover several acres in extent. Here 
 are stored usually normal cement slurry enough for several 
 months' supply, and here a large part of the water is gotten rid of 
 by evaporation and decantation. 
 
 The bassins de dosage were first introduced by French manu- 
 facturers at Boulogne, and it is probable they originated with 
 Candlot, the well-known French authority. In his book, Mr. 
 Candlot alludes to these basins as peculiar to the Boulogne plant, 
 where it is well-known he was long the chief of the bureau of 
 ^'Controle." . 
 
 15 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 In the summer and most of the spring and fall atmospheric 
 influences are sufficient at Beerse to dry the slurry in the bacs 
 for making bricks, and to dry the bricks, when placed in long 
 lines of drying-sheds, for the kilns. In winter, however, this can- 
 not be done, and it will be interesting to the readers of " The 
 Engineering Eecord " to learn that the latest addition to the 
 works is an American drying plant, the Cummer dryer made in 
 Cleveland, 0. This firm makes two forms of dryers, one a revolv- 
 ing dryer for the raw materials, and the other a tunnel dryer for 
 
 Vertical Section. 
 BASSINS DOSEURS, CONDOR WORKS, BEERSE; 
 
 bricks. They have put in both at North's. The revolving dryer 
 is not yet fully installed, but the tunnel dryer is giving excellent 
 results. 
 
 The burning of the clinker is done entirely in Dietzsch kilns,, 
 and the grinding is done by millstones. All the mills are ventilated 
 by suction from fans and there is very little dust. Large silos 
 hold the ground cement. There is a cooper shop, a building for 
 storing barrels, and another for storing cement in barrels. Then 
 there is a co-operative store and a club-house for employees. All 
 
 16 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 the buildings, except the brick works and drying-sheds, are of 
 red brick, giving the plant a substantial appearance. 
 
 The product of the works at Beerse is 300,000 to 400,000 bar- 
 rels, of which 25 per cent, goes to America. 
 
 Cement Sewer Pipe and Bcjilding Ornamests. 
 An interesting development of cement work in Belgium is the 
 workshop of Blaton-Aubert in Brussels. This firm does contract- 
 ing for public works and manufactures cement sewer pipe, both 
 round and egg-shaped sections. The latter are made in two parts, 
 a bottom and a cover as shown in the accom- 
 panying cut. The feature of their business 
 which is especially interesting, however, is the 
 manufacture of moulded work in Portland 
 cement mortar. They make vases, busts, stat- 
 ues and large groups in this way, of many de- 
 signs and of handsome workmanship. In fact 
 they reproduce in cement all the work of this 
 kind which is seen in plaster of paris or terra-cotta, with the 
 great advantage that the product will stand exposure to the 
 weather indefinitely, improving rather than deteriorating with age. 
 The moulds used are of plaster of paris, each large section made 
 of hundreds of small sections dove-tailed together so they can 
 readily be taken apart one piece at a time. The product seems 
 to be much appreciated and in demand for galleries, gardens and 
 parks. 
 
 The Hamburg Cement District, Germant. 
 The first plant for manufacturing Portland cement was built 
 on the Thames in England in 1825 by Apsdin, one year after the 
 new product had been patented. But it was not until 1852 that 
 the first German manufactory was begun. This was the Zulchow 
 works at Stettin, built by Bleibtreu. To-day there are more thani 
 100 manufactories of Portland cement in Germany, with an an- 
 nual output considerably exceeding that of any other country,, 
 and with a high reputation for the general excellence of the- 
 product. 
 
 For purposes of comparison of English and German methods^ 
 of manufacture the works in the vicinity of Hamburg are espe- 
 cially interesting, because the raw materials are quite the same 
 there as in England. That is we have in both places the soft 
 
 17 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 clialk of the North Sea coasts, readily disintegrating in water, and 
 soft plastic clay of quite similar composition. Of these German 
 plants the writer had the pleasure of visiting three, the Alsen and 
 the Laegerdorfer plants on the north side of the Elbe River at 
 Laegerdorf and the Hemmoor plant on the south side of the Elbe 
 ;at Hemmoor. 
 
 The Alsex Plant. 
 By common consent the largest plant in Germany is the Alsen 
 "Works, near Hamburg, with an annual output variously estimated 
 at from 700,000 to 1,000,000 barrels, quite a considerable percent- 
 age going regularly to the American market. The works were 
 built by Alsen & Son, and the business is said to be still a close 
 corporation owned by the Alsens. Mr. Carl Krichauf is the 
 managing director, and it was through his courtesy that the 
 writer enjoyed an opportunity of seeing their plants. They have 
 three works, which are operated practically as one. The plant at 
 Itzehoe is situated at the clay deposit, while the two plants at 
 Laegerdorf are built alongside the chalk quarries. Hzehoe is to 
 1;he north of the Elbe Eiver and about 45 miles from Hamburg, on 
 the West Coast Railroad to Northern Germany and Denmark. 
 Laegerdorf is four miles from Itzehoe, on a canal leading to the 
 railway and the river. The Alsens, however, operate a narrow 
 gauge railway between the two points, carrying chalk and clinker 
 to the Itzehoe plant and clay and coal to the Laegerdorfer plants. 
 As all the clinker is ground and barreled at Itzehoe, and there are 
 two works at the chalk and one at the clay, the traffic on the railr 
 iroad is about equal in amount in each direction and the plant evi- 
 <lently designed for economical operation. There is a fine high- 
 w^ay between the two towns, level for the most part, but skirting 
 the wooded hillside of a large estate. Hills are very rare in 
 Northern Germany, where most of the country is as flat as a 
 Dakota prairie, and this road along the hillside is unusually at- 
 tractive. 
 
 The raw materials of the Alsen properties are both apparently 
 of excellent quality, the chalk in particular being of a fine white 
 color in all parts of the two large quarries. Mr. Wolf, the chief 
 of Bureau of Controle, is indeed quite enthusiastic over the qual- 
 ity of his raw materials and of the slurry he gets from them. 
 
 The mixture is by the humid way — the wash mill and the set- 
 tling basin. The opinion seems to be universal in North Ger- 
 
 18 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 many that the wet process is the only one to be considered for 
 ehalk and clay. Indeed, some manufacturers claim that better 
 results can always be obtained by the wet process, whatever the' 
 raw materials. This view does not, however, prevail in South. 
 Germany, where the dry process is quite generally preferred. 
 Certainly, however, remarkable results are obtained by the wet 
 process considering the simplicity of the means employed. Prac- 
 tically the mixture is final at the wash mill. That is, there is no 
 mixing done in the settling basins and there is no agitation of the 
 material in them except by the stream of slurry pouring in. Yet 
 the limit of variation allowed in regular calcimeter tests by the 
 Bureau of Controle is declared to be 0.5 per cent. With ma- 
 terials which disintegrate in water as readily as chalk and clay, 
 the settling basin seems to be all that is required to secure homo- 
 geneous slurry. 
 
 The Alsens ball the slurry (instead of making bricks of it), dry 
 it in tunnel dryers and burn it in continuous kilns. Some of these 
 are continuous kilns of the well-known Dietzsch pattern (or " two- 
 storied kiln "), but most of them are of the German style of high 
 kiln or schachtofen, originally intermittent kilns, but remodeled 
 so as to work continuously. This they are said to do very satis- 
 factorily, both in respect to output and economy of fuel. The 
 Bureau of Controle has a well-equipped laboratory and there are 
 smaller laboratories for physical tests at each plant. 
 
 At the Alsen quarries all the material is handled by railway, and 
 this service in connection with the line between Itzehoe and 
 Laegerdorf, demands quite a considerable equipment in motive 
 power and rolling stock and in facilities for repair, etc. 
 
 The firm owns, too, a large track of land not required for manu- 
 facturing, and this is devoted to farming and stock raising. One 
 of the principal buildings of the village street is the Alsen cow 
 barn for housing the milch cows and their calves in winter. 
 Built of brick and iron throughout and fitted with many ingenious 
 contrivances, it affords stable room for some 60 head of cows, 
 beside separate quarters for 20 or 30 calves, rooms for milk stor- 
 age, creamery, etc. The firm has beside in the village a working- 
 men's boarding-house and a workingmen's club-house, both of 
 ample size and well equipped and maintained, and it would ap- 
 pear that the laboring class might find many worse places to live 
 in than Laegerdorf. 
 
 19 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 The Laegerdorfer Plant. 
 
 This is a comparatively new plant, with an annual output at 
 present of 200,000 barrels. It is on the canal, one-half mile 
 above the village. The raw materials are like those at the Al- 
 eens', the chalk being in fact quite the same; the mixture is also 
 the same, except that there are small settling bacs provided 
 between the wash mill and the bassins de repos, evidently for the 
 purpose of eliminating any sand which may be present. 
 
 The settling basins cover quite a large area on each side of 
 the canal. These great areas of bassins de repos are indeed a 
 feature of the Hamburg plants. The slurry dries so slowly in 
 them in winter that it is necessary to provide large storage ca- 
 pacity. The works have a complete brick plant with a system 
 of tunnel dryers. The kilns are six in number, double Dietzsch 
 continuous kilns, and the grinding is by French buhrstones. The 
 stock house is across the canal from the mills, and a novel feature 
 is a belt conveyor taking the ground cement across a bridge turn- 
 ing at right angles, and delivering it in the stock house some 
 200 feet away. Another phase of American enterprise is met at 
 the Laegerdorfer works, this time in the form of a set of American 
 drying kilns for drying barrel staves. 
 
 The Hemmoor Plant. 
 
 This plant is quite large, producing 500,000 to 600,000 bar- 
 rels per year, and has evidently been in operation a number of 
 years. It is situated 50 miles from Hamburg, on the railroad to 
 Cuxhaven. The method of manufacture is practically identical 
 with that of the Alsen works, and the kilns are alike in the two 
 plants — Dietzsch kilns and high kilns remodeled to work continu- 
 ously. There are two features worth special notice — one, the use 
 of the American Griffin mill for grinding, and the other the fine 
 laboratories of the works, both for research and for Controle. 
 The director of the works is Dr. Pruessing, whose name became 
 familiar to American readers in connection with a report made a 
 year or two ago on accelerated tests of cement, and the doctor has 
 notably good laboratories, well equipped for every kind of test 
 that has ever been proposed for cement. 
 
 A new form of accelerated test is here used, designed by Dr. 
 Pruessing and which is as follows: To 100 grams of neat cement, 
 7 grams of water are added and well mixed; the very dry mortar 
 
 30 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 ilius made is then placed in a matrix 8 centimeters in diameter 
 -and subjected to a pressure of 2,500 kilograms. The cake is at 
 once removed, and after hardening for 24 hours in air is sub- 
 jected to the hot bath at a temperature of 70 degrees to 80 degrees 
 Centigrade. It is claimed that this test is more severe than any 
 form of boihng test yet devised, and as such it may commend it- 
 -ijelf in America to those who are looking for a test of this descrip- 
 tion. It is only fair, however, to add that the apparatus is rather 
 •expensive. 
 
 From these brief descriptions of the Hamburg plants, it will 
 become clear to the readers of " The Engineering Eecord " that 
 the German practice of dealing with chalk and clay differs from 
 the English in two points, viz.: 1. The use of bassins de 
 repos. 2. The operations of the Bureau of Controle. Any 
 other differences are merely those of detail. 
 
 The German- Marl Cements ; The Hakover Works at 
 
 MlSBURG. 
 
 There are an interesting group of German Portland cement 
 works employing "mergel " (English, marl; French, marne) as 
 -the principal raw material. "Mergel" is a natural mixture of 
 ■clay and carbonate of lime and is generally fossiliferous, contain- 
 ing shells and frequently other fossils. The writer enjoyed an 
 opportunity of visiting two of these works — the Hanover plant 
 ■at Misburg, and Heyn Brothers plant at Lueneburg. In the 
 former the method of procedure is by the dry way, and as this 
 method has not yet appeared in this correspondence, the Hanover 
 works will be described first. 
 
 The Hanover Portland Cement Works are located at Misburg, 
 •a few miles east of the city of Hanover, on the main line of rail- 
 road between Cologne on the Ehine and the capital at Berlin. 
 They have also direct rail communication northward with the 
 ports of Bremen and Hamburg. The works are under the joint 
 -resident direction of Dr. Erdmenger and Mr. Kuhlemann, both 
 well-known and prominent men in the German Association. They 
 .are shown in plan on the following page. 
 
 The natural advantages of the plant are at once apparent. It 
 is built directly at the railroad, with siding facilities like any 
 other manufactory, while just below the surface of the ground is 
 found a marl deposit some 40 odd feet in depth over the entire 
 
 21 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 property. Immediately below the marl is found the clay. Both 
 raw materials thus occur directly in situ and are cheaply and ex- 
 peditiously handled by an inclined plane descending from the rear 
 of the mill. 
 
 The' marl is grayish white in color, as soft and apparently as 
 ■easy to dilute with water as chalk. It is a natural mixture of 
 <?arbonate of lime with clay, quite free from other impurities. The 
 proportion of clay in the marl varies from place to place over 
 the fac6 of the quarry, but is generally within 10 per cent, of 
 normal proportions for cement. At the time the writer was 
 there, the marl was exactly normal, being used just as it came 
 from the quarry. The clay is really another bed of marl in which 
 the clay predominates instead of the carbonate of lime. 
 
 Under these conditions the ordinary work of the Bureau of 
 Controle is very simple. Nature has already mixed each of the 
 raw materials with a large proportion of the other; to strike a 
 close average of normal proportions and to further complete the 
 mixture is evidently a matter of simple routine. In the opera- 
 tions of the Bureau of Controle the raw materials are analyzed 
 regularly as they come from the working face of the quarry, and 
 the mixing proportions are slated at the scales from day to day 
 or even from hour to hour if necessary. A second determination 
 is made after the material has been ground dry and has passed 
 into the silos, and lastly a third determination is made of the 
 bricks prepared for burning. These analyses proceed in regular 
 course under a system of routine adopted by Dr. Erdmenger, 
 which has proved so efficient that the ddctor declares the analyses 
 of bricks are " always right " within a limit of one-half of one 
 per cent. 
 
 As the raw materials come from the quarry they contain some- 
 thing like 11 per cent, of water, which must be eliminated before 
 the material can be ground. It was formerly the custom to bring 
 the raw material from the quarry and spread it on steam drying 
 pans placed upon the ground. To dry the material in this way, 
 however, required a large area covered with drying pans and a 
 great deal of manual labor in loading and unloading. Besides, 
 it evidently was not economical in fuel. The company had there- 
 fore modified the plant just prior to the writer's visit by the in- 
 stallation of a Cummer revolving dryer for drying the raw mate- 
 rials. This is the American dryer mentioned previously in these 
 
 33 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 descriptions, and as installed at tlie Hanover works is giving 
 very satisfactory results. The method of working with the new 
 dryer is to bring the raw materials directly from the quarry to the 
 scales and thence to an edge-runner mill. This edge-runner mill 
 consists simply of a pair of large rolls fitted loosely on the same 
 axle and running on a revolving plate below. The outer third of 
 this revolving plate is perforated with holes, so that all material up 
 to the size of a pea shall pass through. From the edge-runner mill 
 the material is carried by elevator directly to the Cummer dryer^ 
 
 GERMAN CEMENT SILO. 
 
 through which it passes continuously at the rate of 15 tons an 
 hour. Thence it is carried by elevator and transmission apparatus 
 to the mill, where it is ground, bolted and passes to the silos for 
 raw material. With such soft raw materials and materials which are 
 already approximately normal in their natural state, it is evident 
 that the edge runner and the mill stones will complete a very 
 intimate mixture. A curious evidence, however, of the purpose 
 to insure a homogeneous mixture by every means available is seen. 
 
 24 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 in the long lines of worms which conduct the pulverized material! 
 from the mill to the silos. These worms, instead of being con- 
 tinuous, are made of a series of knives bolted at intervals to a, 
 central shaft. When Dr. Erdmenger was asked why this discon- 
 tinuous worm was used, he said it was for mixing; at every blade- 
 a part of the cement w^as pushed on and a part remained, and 
 thus the mixing went on continuously with the transfer of the- 
 material. This same style of worm is used in forwarding the- 
 material to the brick machine and also in forwarding the cement 
 to the cement silos. 
 
 A German cement silo is, as near as may be, built on the model 
 of an American grain elevator. That is, it consists of a series of" 
 bins, in which the dry material is deposited by elevators and from 
 which it is drawn below by spouts. An illustration of the type- 
 of construction used is given in the cut. The kilns at the Han- 
 over plant are Hoffman kilns or so called " ring ovens," which- 
 require the raw materials to be delivered in the shape of bricks. 
 But as the method of working is entirely by the dry way, and as 
 any moisture used to mold the bricks must be subsequently driven- 
 out either by exposure to the air or by the heat of the furnace, it 
 is desirable to make the bricks with as little water as possible.. 
 This is done by running the ground raw material continuously 
 through a sheet metal trough and adding a small continuous^ 
 stream of water intended to be from 5 per cent, to 7 per cent. 
 Thence the material is passed to the brick machine. This ma- 
 chine is not a pug mill, such as is used in making bricks in wet 
 processes, but a press known to the trade as a dry press. In this- 
 press the raw material falls through hoppers and is automatically 
 delivered to the molds. The heavy presses are raised by cams 
 and strike each brick three sharp blows, delivering it warm, firm 
 and nearly dry. The bricks are stacked in great piles in sheds, 
 so that they lose most of the water they contain before being 
 placed in the kilns. 
 
 The Hoffman kiln or " ring oven " in use in the Hanover- 
 works was originally used in Germany in making bricks. It con- 
 sists of a continuous gallery of an elliptical shape built around a 
 central chimney. There are usually 15 or 20 compartments, with 
 as many entrances from the outside and as many ports leading to 
 the chimney. In practical working in a kiln of 20 compartments, 
 there are, say, six which are filled with burnt clinker, still warnv 
 
 35 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 two which are in process of burning, six which are filled with 
 bricks not yet l)urnecl, and in the remainder charging and dis- 
 charging is in progress. The connection with the chimney is by 
 the port in the last chamber filled with bricks, and the draft is 
 through the open door of the compartment on the other side 
 which is being discharged of clinker. All intermediate openings, 
 both to the chimney and to the outside, are sealed and a heavy 
 paper partition is pasted across the gallery (and against the bricks) 
 just beyond the open chimney port. Thus the air is heated by 
 passing through the hot clinker in six chambers and arrives at a 
 high temperature in the combustion chamber. Similarly the 
 products of combustion pass through several chambers filled with 
 bricks which are thus heated to a high temperature before burn- 
 ing actually begins. These kilns are widely used in Germany 
 and evidently are economical of fuel, but expensive in manual 
 labor. In the best practice with Hoffman kilns about one ton of 
 coal is required to produce 6-| tons of clinker, a performance 
 which is very much better than anything which has ever been 
 done with discontinuous kilns. A t the -Hanover works they have 
 three of these kiln3,-with a capacity of 70,000, 80,000 and 100,000 
 barrels per annum respectively, and they also have three of the 
 old discontinuous dome kilns, so that, their annual capacity is 
 about 300,000 barrels. The grinding of the clinker is done en- 
 tirely by French mill-stones and the fineness regulated by bolting 
 through sieves. The cement is stored in silos. 
 
 The power plant of the works, like nearly all European power 
 plants, is of a high standard of excellence. For grinding the raw 
 material there is a compound Corliss engine of 350 horse-power 
 and for grinding the clinker a similar engine of 900 horse-power, 
 and in both engines the power is taken directly from the flywheel 
 by rope transmission. The works have a fair laboratory service 
 for control, and a laboratory for research which is only remark- 
 able for the high character of the work which Dr. Erdmenger 
 turns out of it. 
 
 Hetx Brothers' Plakt at Lueneburg. 
 
 This plant is situated in the ancient town of Lueneburg, about 
 an hour's ride by express train to the south from Hamburg, and 
 having both rail and canal facilities. The marl is practically the 
 same as at Hanover. The clay is more nearly a pure clay. The 
 
 26 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 method of work, however, is entirely by the wet process, employ- 
 ing the wash mill, settling basin and brick making with tunnel 
 dryers for drying the bricks. The plant is in excellent order, 
 showing many details of mechanical excellence. The marl quarry 
 is perhaps a quarter of a mile from the wash mill, on the other 
 side of the highway, and the raw materials are carried by wire 
 cableway across this space with rapidity and economy. Similarly 
 in the brick-making and brick-drying plant, the carriages are run 
 on a system of overhead runways exactly similar to those in use 
 in a Chicago packing-house. All the buckets, however, are pro- 
 vided with grips, and in leaving the brick-works for the top of the 
 Dietzsch kilns they are gripped to a cable and carried forward and 
 upward by it. On the upper stories of the kilns the buckets are 
 again carried by a system of runways. The wdiole scheme is ex- 
 peditious and economical. The firm employs Dietzsch kilns ex- 
 clusively to burn their clinker, and are preparing to use the 
 American Griffin mills exclusively for grinding. They have had 
 two of these mills in use for some time, but are now putting in 
 three more which will grind the entire output of the works. It 
 is evident that the advantages of the Griffin mills must have proved 
 considerable at Lueneburg, since they will displace a very excel- 
 lent plant of French millstones. Except therefore for the raw 
 material employed, which is chiefly marl instead of chalk, the 
 Lueneburg plant might be classified with the Hamburg plants. 
 
 There are a number of other works in Central Germany em- 
 ploying " mergel " as the raw material, the largest of them being- 
 the Germania Works at Misburg and Lehrte. 
 
 German Cements from Hard Eaw Materials — The 
 Dyckerhoff AVohks. 
 
 No brand of imported cement is better known in America than: 
 the Dyckerhoff cement, and no manufacturer has maintained a 
 more constant interest in the technical side of cement making or 
 taken a more prominent part in such questions before the Ger- 
 man Association than Mr. Rudolph Dyckerhoff. The Dycker- 
 hoff plant is located directly upon the River Rhine, at Amoene- 
 burg, a few miles below the city of Maintz. The river is an im- 
 portant factor in the plant. The coal comes by barges, the clay 
 also is brought from the Main, the tributary stream a few miles, 
 away, and the greater part of the product of the works is shipped 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 "by the river. From the river side there is a cable tramway lead- 
 ing under the highway through the works. The plant itself cov- 
 ■ers a large area, and the process of dealing with the raw materials 
 IS quite unique. Back a mile or two from the river front is the 
 limestone quarry, and this quarry contains in difEerent beds three 
 •different grades of stone. These are : 1, a hard limestone; 
 2, a soft limestone, and 3, a soft marl. By the process 
 ■employed all three are utilized, and as will be seen below they 
 are not only utilized, but this diversity in the character of the 
 rock becomes a positive advantage. The hard and soft limestones 
 -are substantially the same in composition, and do not vary much, 
 being approximately 80 per cent, carbonate of lime The marl 
 is more irregular in composition. 
 
 Thus, with the clay, the plant employs four different raw ma- 
 terials. In order to do this two distinct plants are employed, one 
 dealing with raw material entirely by the dry way, and the other 
 •dealing with it entirely by the humid way. The raw material 
 prepared dry is the hard limestone, with such suitable additions 
 •of soft marl and clay as may be required to produce normal com- 
 position for cement. These three materials are first dried over 
 ■drying furnaces, then pass through crushing machinery and are 
 ground and incorporated together in millstones. While this 
 process is going on at one plant, a wholly different preparation by 
 the humid way takes place at the other. In this the soft lime- 
 Btone, marl and clay are brought together, in proportions fixed 
 l)y the Bureau of Controle, in wash mills. Thence the stream of 
 slurry passes to millstones and is ground wet, and from these 
 mills it is pumped to long lines of troughs mounted on trestles 
 to the settling basins, where it dries by evaporation and decanta- 
 tion, as in the regular wet or humid process. It is probable that 
 "the soft limestone and marl of the Dyckerhoff works is less easily 
 •diluted with water than the materials found further north in 
 'Germany and that this makes the wet grinding desirable. The 
 wash mills, too, instead of being provided with harrows on arbors, 
 •as in the mills in Northern Germany, are provided with edge- 
 runner stones which crush as well as mix the raw materials. 
 
 The two processes, wet and dry, go on side by side at the rear 
 of the works, the part most remote from the river. Lying imme- 
 'diately in front is a large area devoted to bassins de repos and 
 traversing this are the overhead runways for conveying the slurry 
 
 28 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 to the basins, an overhead cableway for conveying the dry raw 
 material to the brick plant, and tramways on the ground for con- 
 veying the thick slurry from the bassins de repos to the same 
 point. At the brick plant the wet and dry materials are brought 
 together, and the first operation is to mix the wet slurry with the 
 <3ry powder in any required proportion to give the material the 
 proper consistency for the brick machines. As both wet and dry 
 materials are normal in composition (or intended to be so) the 
 proportions in which they are mixed is immaterial, and may be 
 varied at will by the foreman, whose only care is to produce the 
 consistency required. It is here that the utilization of the hard 
 limestone by the dry process becomes a distinct advantage in 
 working. The slurry can be used much wetter than if only wet 
 material was used. This is an advantage at all times, but es- 
 pecially so in winter, when the drying of the slurry is always slow, 
 and often a serious difficulty. The two materials are mixed in 
 malaxeurs, and from them are carried upward by an inclined belt 
 conveyor to the top of the brick-making machines. The whole 
 process is well considered and carefully worked out to suit the 
 conditions. 
 
 At the Dyckerhoff plant, Hoffman kilns are employed ex- 
 clusively. The works have seven of these kilns, producing yearly 
 about 700,000 barrels of cement. The standard kiln of the works 
 has 20 compartments, and a round of the compartments is made 
 twice a month. Each compartment is reckoned to produce from 
 250 to 300 barrels of cement. All the kilns are arranged with 
 drying chambers, in which the bricks are dried by the 
 waste heat. These chambers are built around the upper or 
 firing deck of the kilns, and have large ventilating hoods in 
 the roofs above. A good many bricks are also dried directly on 
 top of the kiln. There are two special grinding plants for clinker, 
 both using French millstones exclusively and both having fine 
 power plants. One mill has a compound Corliss engine, and the 
 other a new 1,000 horse-power triple-expansion engine, probably 
 the handsomest piece of machinery in any cement works in 
 Europe. 
 
 Dr. Schumann is at the head of the Bureau of Controle of the 
 Byckerhoff works, and has an excellent laboratory, which does not 
 only this work, but a large amount of the experimental work in 
 which Mr. Dyckerhoff and Dr. Schumann are engaged. For more 
 
 29 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 exact analyses the firm avails itself of the laboratory of Dr. Fre- 
 senius of Wiesbaden. 
 
 The Mannheimer Plants at Weisenau and Mannheim. 
 
 The Mannheimer Portland Cement Company is one of the 
 oldest in Germany, tAvo others only, it is believed, antedating it, 
 and a considerable part of its product has for many years found a 
 market in America, where it has held an excellent reputation. 
 The original works were located at Mannheim, but a newer and 
 larger plant has now been built at Weisenau, *just outside the city 
 of Maintz. The Weisenau plant is thus evidently the more in- 
 teresting of the two, but as the writer did not know this he went 
 to Mannheim and did not see the Weisenau plant. As described 
 by Mr. Merz, the director of the company, the raw materials at 
 Weisenau are substantially the same in character and from the 
 same geological formation as the Dyckerhoff works. The plant 
 is on the opposite side of the Ehine from Dyckerhotf's and but a 
 few miles distant. In working the raw materials also the process- 
 follows similar ideas, but differs considerably in details. At Weis- 
 enau, the hard and soft limestone and the marl are all prepared 
 by the dry way. The clay only is made into slurry, and the dry 
 pulverized limestones and the clay slurry are incorporated by 
 special machinery adapted for this purpose and the paste made 
 into bricks. This is evidently another adaptation of means to- 
 ends in dealing with these raw materials and is an ingenious 
 modification of the dry process. The plant at Weisenau uses both 
 Dietzsch and Hoffman kilns, and produces 350,000 pounds of 
 cement annually. 
 
 At the Mannheimer plant we find raw materials which are 
 harder than any yet described. The limestone, which is 85 per 
 cent, of the material employed, is all quite hard, and the clay is 
 shaly or partially indurated. The method is wholly by the dry 
 process. The material is all dried on open dryers set on the sur- 
 face of the ground and the materials are mixed, crushed and 
 ground dry in millstones. The pulverized raw material is then 
 made into bricks with a limited quantity of water, and the bricks 
 are then dried for the kilns. It will thus be seen that the hand- 
 ling of the raw materials at Mannheim is not essentially different 
 from the method pursued in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. 
 The Mannheimer has five Dietzsch kilns and one Hoffman kiln^ 
 
 30 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 and produces about 250,000 barrels of cement annually. A part 
 of the grinding is done by millstones, -but a more recent installa- 
 tion is the German " kugel " mill, a revolving cylinder with fluted 
 •sides, in which the clinker is ground by the impact of the steel 
 balls. The product of this mill is bolted and the coarser par- 
 ticles are then re-ground in the new Danish ball mill. This is 
 •sjpecially adapted to fine grinding and is simply a revolving cylin- 
 der loaded with flint balls which grind by abrasion and impact. 
 
 The Schifferdecker Works at Heidelberg. 
 
 The Schifferdecker works at Heidelberg were destroyed by fire 
 .■some time ago, and are now in course of rebuilding. The writer 
 Lad a cordial invitation from Mr. Schott, the director of the 
 works, to visit the plant, but was unable to do so on account of 
 •other engagements. The plant is said to employ hard raw ma- 
 terials exclusively, and a conception of the size of the new works 
 may be arrived at from the fact that the firm has ordered 65 
 Griffin mills for grinding the raw material and clinker. The in- 
 terest in these works would be chiefly in the details, since the 
 general method of handling material by the dry way has already 
 been described in this correspondence. 
 
 The readers of " The Engineering Eecord " will already have 
 •discovered from these letters that there is no " German " method 
 of making cement. The successful plants are those which most 
 intelligently adapt means to ends and suit their plants to the raw 
 materials and to the local conditions. This is a very old idea, 
 often lost sight of, but is evidently the only basis on which suc- 
 cessful manufacturing can be conducted either in Germany or in 
 America. 
 
 The German Cement Kilns. 
 
 The kilns now most generally approved and most widely used 
 in Germany, for the manufacture of Portland cement, are the 
 Dietzsch and Hoffman kilns, both of which have been mentioned 
 in this correspondence. They are both continuous kilns, but 
 differ in this respectj that while in the Hoffman kiln the fire 
 passes from chamber to chamber and the material rests in place, 
 in the Dietzsch kiln the combustion chamber is fixed and the 
 material passes through the fire. The kilns are both also eco- 
 nomical in fuel and both accomplish this in substantially the same 
 way, that is, they heat the draught of air by passing it through 
 
 31 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 the burnt clinker before it reaches the combustion chamber, and 
 they utilize the products of combustion to heat the raw material 
 before it is subjected to the fire. In the Dietzsch kiln the furnace 
 is vertical and in the Hoffman it is horizontal. 
 
 The general scheme of the Hoffman kiln was described in the 
 letter on the Hanover Works, but this will be made clearer by 
 the figure, which is taken from the recently published book of Dr. 
 Schoch, of Berlin. The bricks are wheeled into the chambers at 
 the ground level and piled by skilled workmen. The fuel is in- 
 troduced from the top through the orifices in the roof. It is. 
 necessary to pile the bricks in quite a special manner, so that the 
 gases may pass readily through the mass and to leave vertical 
 
 GERMAN CEMENT KILNS. 
 
 spaces beneath the opening in the roof through which the fuel 
 may descend to the bottom. The practice in this respect differs 
 in different works as the result of experience, but the scheme will 
 be readily understood from the illustration and description given. 
 
 The Dietzsch kiln is shown in detail at the right of the cut, 
 taken from a bulletin of the French " Societe d'Encouragement 
 pour ITndustrie Nationale." The drawing is practically a working 
 drawing of the Dietzsch kiln, or the " kiln with stories," as it is- 
 also called. This kiln was patented in 1884 and first used in 1886, 
 since which time a large number of them have been built in Ger- 
 many. The kiln is operated continuously by charging the dried 
 
 32 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 slurry into the chimney through the door shown at the upper floor 
 of the kiln building and by drawing the burnt clinker from the 
 grate at the bottom. The peculiarity of the kiln is at the fire 
 bridge, where there is a horizontal offset uniting the lower and 
 upper parts of the stack. The part of the furnace Just below the 
 fire bridge, some 5 or 6 feet in depth, is the combustion chamber. 
 The chimney above is the pre-heater for the raw material and in 
 the shaft below the combustion chamber the clinker is cooled. 
 
 In practical working the dried bricks or dried slurry are 
 carried by elevator to the fifth story of the kiln building and are 
 charged into the chimney. The chimney is kept filled with brick* 
 to or near the level of the charging door, and at the bottom they 
 fall across the fire bridge half way to the combustion chamber. 
 At certain intervals throughout the day the burnt clinker is 
 drawn from the bottom of the kiln and the entire mass above the 
 fire bridge descends. This is then filled by drawing bricks from 
 the chimney across the fire bridge to the combustion chamber 
 and adding with them a proper quantity of fuel. The most try- 
 ing labor at the kiln therefore is at the level of the fire bridge, 
 which is the third story of the kiln building. Here the bricka 
 must be carried across the fire bridge by manual labor employing 
 long handled iron bars through the fire doors, and the fire must 
 be regularly maintained. 
 
 The fuel used is a powdered gas coal containing a large percent- 
 age of volatile matter, so that the flame from it passes over the 
 fire bridge and up the chimney. The bricks in the chimney are 
 thus gradually heated as they descend, until at the time they 
 reach the fire bridge they are red hot and practically all the car- 
 bonic acid has been expelled. In the combustion chamber the 
 bricks are clinkered, and in the shaft below the burnt clinker is 
 cooled by the draught of air so that it reaches the grate at the 
 bottom cold enough to handle. In the latest practice the 
 Dietzsch kilns are operated under forced draught. 
 
 Just below the combustion chamber several doors are provided 
 in the side of the kilns to observe the fire, so as to know whether 
 it is proceeding properly. From these doors and also from one 
 in the top of the kiln, just over the combustion chamber, the fire 
 ean also be poked to prevent balling up of the clinker, or to de- 
 tach masses clinging to the sides. 
 
 In the actual working of the kiln proper the Dietzsch kiln 
 
 33 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 is more economical of fuel than the Hoffman, but since it is neces- 
 sary to use thoroughly dried bricks in the Dietzsch kiln, requiring 
 generally some artificial heat for drying, the total fuel consump- 
 tion is probably not very different in the two kilns, showing a 
 production in first class practice of between six and seven tons of 
 clinker per ton of fuel. In manual labor also there is probably 
 not a very great difference in the working of the two, drying and 
 calcining both considered, the advantage if anything being prob- 
 ably in favor of the Dietzsch kiln. 
 
 In fact the impression of the writer is that both in fuel alid 
 labor there is some advantage in favor of the Dietzsch kiln, while 
 for yield on capital invested in the plant, the Hoffman kiln makes 
 the better showing. 
 
 Portland Oemekt in Fhance. 
 
 French Portland cements are not exported to America, afitd 
 the character of the French works and their products are veYy 
 little known with us. Yet in several important respects French 
 practice in making and in using cement is extremely interesting. 
 Kg where is the industry better organized, or does its organization 
 more strictly follow the lines of scientific method, and nowhere 
 does practice represent greater experience. This may surprise 
 those who know the comparatively small output of cement in 
 France; not more, perhaps, than one-fifth of the German product. 
 But it is so, and an explanation is found in well-known facts> the 
 force of which will be recognized once they are cited. 
 
 One of these is the early precedence which French science 
 took and has since held, in dealing with the phenomena of hy- 
 draulic binding media. A dozen years before the Portland ce- 
 ment process was discovered, Collet-Descotils, of the " Ecole des 
 nines," at Paris, demonstrated that the silica in lime rocks be- 
 'Caine soluble when the limestone was brought to red heat, and k& 
 iirgued from this that the silica combined with the lime during 
 <!alcination to give it hydraulic properties. This is the funda- 
 mental fact of all cement making. Vicat's long series of investi- 
 gations dates from the same early period, and his books are classics' 
 •of cement literature. Many names will be recalled since these, 
 and among them the ptesent group of men who are to-day treat- 
 ing this subject with such marked ability in France. 
 
 The second reason which gives the French industry and .French 
 
 34 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 practice special interest is the fact that the manufacture of cement 
 in France is virtually controlled by the engineers of the Fonts et 
 Chaussees, the celebrated corps which, for 175 years, has been 
 charged with the public works of France. Just what this means 
 will be better appreciated by a comparison. Thus, with us the 
 national public works do not carry much prestige, are, in fact, 
 of quite minor importance, often less in annual expenditure than 
 the public works of some of the greater cities. Yet it Avill be 
 readily admitted that if a standard specification for cement were 
 adopted by the U. S. Engineer Corps, it would have great weight 
 with manufacturers and with consumers. Now, in France the 
 administration of national public works is charged with the 
 supervision of " all works of a public character or necessity, 
 whether undertaken by the State, the department, committees, 
 public boards or syndical associations," and whether paid for 
 at the government's expense or not. These works comprise 
 " the construction and maintenance of the public roads and 
 bridges, the construction and maintenance of commercial ports, 
 dykes, sea-coast works — such as dredging, etc. — canals and works 
 for maritime purposes and navigation of the interior, the estab- 
 lishing and building of lighthouses, beacons and buoye, the im- 
 provement and maintenance of the navigation of rivers and tribu- 
 taries, towpaths, jetties, piers, works for shore protection to river 
 banks — drainage and reclamation of lands, construction and main- 
 tenance of railroads, etc." Military works, city works proper and 
 private enterprises without public interest are excepted, but praC" 
 tically all the rest comes under the supervision of the Engineers 
 of the Fonts et Chaussees. The specifications of this great de- 
 partment of public works become, therefore, of prime impor- 
 tance to manufacturers, and of the greatest interest to anyone 
 who would make himself familiar with French cement affairs. 
 The scope which these specifications have will be apparent from 
 the following extract from Article 2 of the specifications of the 
 Maritime Service : " The Administration reserves to itself the 
 exercise of control, under conditions which shall be determined by 
 it, of the fabrication, the preservation in store at the works and 
 the shipping of cement which may be furnished in executing the 
 present contract. For this purpose the engineer or his dele- 
 gate shall have access at all times in the parts of the works en- 
 gaged on this product, and he shall be able, 1. to make all dis- 
 
 35 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 positions that he shall judge necessary to assure himself of the 
 composition of the crude slurry employed for the product in- 
 tended for the Administration; 2. to control the sorting of clink- 
 er for calcination; 3. to follow the cement submitted from 
 the sorting of the clinker to the special warehouse where it will 
 be stored for shipping; 4. to control the special lead sealing of 
 sacks leaving the storehouse and the shipping of the cement; 5. 
 to place special men remaining permanently at the works for the 
 above purpose." 
 
 It will be seen from the above that the specifications contem- 
 plate an inspection service at the works, dealing with the manu- 
 facture from the raw materials to the shipping of the product, 
 and just such a service is actually in force. The specifications of 
 the Fonts et Chaussees have been adopted by the Military Engi- 
 gineers, and by the Colonial Administration, and the city of Paris 
 has adopted quite similar requirements. In this way we find in 
 French cement works a number of inspectors present, one repre- 
 senting, say the maritime service of the Fonts et Chaussees, an- 
 other the inland service for the same corps, another representing 
 the city of Faris, and perhaps a fourth representing the military 
 organization. The case is exactly the same as in an American 
 Bteel works, where numerous inspectors are present representing 
 purchasers. Thus the French works are brought into direct con- 
 tact with the engineer corps, with the schools and with the 
 best science. 
 
 The Works of Darsy, Lefebvre, Stenne and Lavocat 
 AT Neufchatel. 
 
 These works were established in 1862 by Messrs. Darsy & 
 Lefebvre and are now under the direction of Mr. Lavocat, through 
 whose courtesy the writer was permitted to see the plant. It is 
 located at Neufchatel, a quarter of an hour's ride by rail to the 
 eouth of Boulogne, and is quite a large plant, having 15 Johnson 
 kilns and six continuous kilns. The raw materials are marl and 
 clay. The marl comes from a quarry two-thirds of a mile away 
 and the clay from the valley beyond. The marl as quarried con- 
 tains considerable clay, varying from 10 per cent, up to the full 
 amount required for cement slurry (say 22 per cent.), and hence 
 the amount of clay which it is necessary to add is small. 
 
 The thing which impresses one first in visiting a French ce- 
 
 ^36 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 ment plant is the extreme simplicity of the arrangements and the 
 •careful study of economy in manual labor. The conditions in 
 France approach more nearly to our own in that respect than 
 •elsewhere in Europe. Labor is dear, and so we find Mr. La- 
 vocat bringing his marl to the wash mills by rail in dump cars, 
 using an electric trolley locomotive just as in the latest practice 
 in America. One locomotive and a small crew thus does all the 
 hauling of the marl. We also find that the analysis of the raw 
 materials figure very little in French manufacturing. The clay 
 and marl are mixed in the wash mills in proportions which are 
 merely approximate. It is the bassins de dosage and not the wash 
 mills which determine the proportions of the slurry. Mr. La- 
 Tocat has three wash mills, two of which are in use; from them 
 the slurry overflows through fine metal sieves and runs with a 
 gentle slope into one of the three bassins de dosage. On the other 
 side of these bassins doseurs are two small wash mills, one 
 using a marl of known composition and the other using pure 
 olay. It is not until a bassin de dosage is full of slurry that the 
 French chemist appears upon the scene. He then takes samples 
 •of the slurry and analyzes it, not for carbonic acid by volumetric 
 determination, as is common in Germany, but for clay by gravi- 
 metric methods. At the Darsy works the limiting figures for clay 
 are from 21 to 22 per cent., and any variation beyond these fig- 
 iires is corrected by adding pure clay or pure marl to the basin 
 from the small wash mills described above. It may take one, 
 two or three determinations to get the right mixture, but it is not 
 until the mixture is normal that the slurry escapes from the bas- 
 sins de dosage and it is not until it is considered normal that the 
 inspectors of the Fonts et Chaussees take their samples. 
 
 The laboratory of the Maritime Service of the Fonts et 
 Ohaussees is at Boulogne and is under the direction of Mr. Feret, 
 the well-known engineer. Mr. Lavoeat showed the writer a long 
 series of check analyses made there on the slurry which the in- 
 spectors had sampled. The results and analyses made under the 
 direction of Mr. Feret are available to the manufacturers of the 
 cement, and it is apparent that while the supervision of the Fonts 
 et Chausees is close and rigid, the relations which it sustains to 
 manufacturers are nevertheless cordial, the results obtained being 
 always freely available to a manufacturer for his information and 
 guidance. 
 
 37 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 From the bassins de dosage the slurr}' runs by gravity to the 
 drying chambers of the Johnson kihis. These kilns are exactly 
 like those described in England, that is, they are discontinuous 
 kilns, having long drying chambers between the kilns and the 
 chimney in which the slurry is dried by the products of com- 
 bustion. 
 
 The kilns, which are really French and new to this corre- 
 spondence, are the continuous kilns mentioned above. For the 
 service of these kilns the slurry is run into settling basins, like 
 those in Germany, where half the water is gotten rid of by 
 evaporation and decantation. The balance of the water is elim- 
 inated in the drying chambers of the kilns, being brought there 
 in cars by elevator. The lower drying chambers are laid with 
 .rails and there are turn-tables and switches, so that the cars 
 reach all parts of the upper and lower drying chambers of these 
 kilns. Now it will be apparent to your readers that a continuous 
 kiln with drying chambers is a novelty, Notking of the kind 
 has been mentioned before in this correspondence, and this kiln 
 is, in fact, an evolution of French practice. Imagine, then, a kiln 
 of the Johnson type, made higher and narrower and having two 
 sets of chambers (upper and lower for each), instead of one 
 leading from the kiln to the chimney. It is evident, then, that by 
 valves or ports the products of combustion can then be made to 
 pass at will either through one pair of chambers or the other, 
 and the operation of the kiln can thus proceed continuously, re- 
 gardless of the charging and discharging of the material from 
 the drying chambers. The scheme is very simple, and 
 the furnace itself is extremely simple in design. The 
 slurry and the coal are charged into the kiln from the top 
 through an opening arranged like the charging door of a blast 
 furnace. At the Darsy works there is also a door in the side 
 opposite to the drying chambers, through which the fire can 
 be observed and clinker and coal added if desirable. These kilns 
 produce about twice the product per day that can be obtained 
 from a discontinuous Johnson kiln, and achieve considerable 
 economy in fuel besides. The cost of manual labor is said to 
 be about the same. The six continuous kilns at these works as 
 originally built were Johnson kilns and were remodeled by Mr. 
 Lavocat into their present shape. 
 
 On the clinker floor at the bottom of the kilns the writer 
 
 38 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 gets a view of what the Fonts et Chaussees requires in the way 
 of sorting clinlver. Heaped against the walls opposite certain fnr- 
 naces are piles of clean hard black clinker, quite free from un- 
 derburnt or dirt. It is the very choice and pick of the product.- 
 Mr. Lavocat explains that this is for the sea water work, and is 
 required by the inspectors of the Maritime Service, and he ad- 
 mits, too, that it is quite right for sea water work that all the 
 underburnt clinker should be excluded. Eeferring to the specificar 
 tions for the Maritime Service we find that the cement is " re- 
 quired to be produced by the grinding of scorified clinker obtained 
 by calcining to the softening point of an intimate mixture of 
 carbonate of lime and clay, rigorously proportioned chemically and 
 physically homogeneous in all its parts." The specifications fur- 
 ther require that cements containing more than 1 per cent, of 
 sulphuric acid or sulphides in determinable proportions will be 
 refused and that any cement will be declared suspected that has 
 more than 4 per cent, of oxide of iron, or which Avill give a 
 less value than 44 per cent, for the ratio of combined silica plus 
 alumina to the lime. This demand of the French specifications 
 for pure cement with a selection of the very best clinker may 
 account for the remarkable success which the French engineers' 
 have achieved in their maritime works. 
 
 The grinding of clinker at the Darsy works is entirely by mill- 
 stones, and the fineness is determined by bolting the ground 
 powder. The entire works are very ingeniously arranged with 
 many clever devices which show Mr. Lavocat to be an accom- 
 plished engineer. 
 
 Works of E. Candlot et Cie,, at DennemojtT. 
 
 These works are new, having been built in 1893. They also 
 develop a new cement industry, no works having been previously 
 built in this vicinity. The conception of the enterprise is due' 
 to Mr. Edouard Candlot, the well-known French engineer and 
 author, who had previously been for years the director of the' 
 works at Boulogne of the Societe Anonyme des Ciments Fran- 
 f lis, the company which owns the largest cement plant in France. 
 
 This new enterprise is on the left bank of the Seine and about 
 an hour's ride by express train from Paris by the Western Rail- 
 road. The works at Dennemont are quite unique in plan. They 
 are interesting liot only as being the newest works in France, 
 
 39 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 but because they represent the ideas of Mr. Candlot in devel- 
 oping a plant to suit local conditions. The property is situated 
 on the Seine^ and the river is the source of supply for fuel and 
 the shipping outlet of the works. From the river there is a 
 plateau of about 1,000 feet to the foot of the hill, and it is- 
 here at the base of the hill that the works have been built. At 
 first sight this appears awkward, but after examining the plant 
 it is found to provide a convenient and economical plan for con- 
 struction, and to be quite economical in manual labor in op- 
 eration. The raw material (chalk) is quarried in tunnels running- 
 directly into the hillside opposite to and a little above the level 
 of the wash mills. Thus the cars run by gravity to the wash 
 mills and the slurry runs by gravity to the bassins de dosage; 
 thence is pumped directly through a height of 100 feet to the- 
 settling basins on the top of the bluff. This is the only opera- 
 tion in which gravity is adverse and it is cheaply performed by 
 power. The settling basins are high enough above the kilns to 
 permit thick slurry to run into the drying chambers. In burnings 
 the clinker passes from the top of the kilns to the bottom, and 
 the outlet at the bottom is at a little elevation above the crush- 
 ing machinery. Still a little lower down is the upper floor 
 of the mill building, and still below the mill building is the- 
 storehouse for the ground cement. Thus, after the slurry is 
 pumped to the top of the hill, the course of the material is- 
 regularly downward, with gravity to assist each operation. 
 
 The coal, of course, has to be carried to the top of the kilns, 
 as in all other works. This is done by a cableway leading from 
 the river to the top of the hillside. At the river side for handling 
 the coal and for loading' the cement is an electric locomotive jib- 
 crane. The whole scheme is ingeniously worked out, and the 
 product of the works is evidently unusually large for the man- 
 ual labor employed. The kilns at the Dennemont plant are con- 
 tinuous kilns of the same type described above for the Darsy 
 plant, a little more modern and a little simpler in design, but 
 essentially the same; and the process of handling the materials 
 and determining the dosage is exactly the same, and hence need 
 not be further described. 
 
 Mr. Candlot is a firm believer in what the French call " ciment 
 arme; " that is, cement work built on an iron skeleton of wire, 
 expanded metal or other device of this kind. The floors of the- 
 
 40 
 
THE EUROPEAN CEMENT INDUSTRY. 
 
 buildings are sustained by beams and flooring of this " ciment 
 arm6" and the hoppers bringing the clinker to the mills are- 
 also built of it. Also the hoods in the laboratory and even the 
 slabs which cover the lower drying chambers of the kilns are 
 made of it. All of it is in excellent condition, though the mills- 
 are doing service under very heavy loads. 
 
 At the Dennemont works there are usually three inspectors 
 representing the Fonts et Chaussees and the city of Paris. The 
 output of the works is about 120,000 barrels per annum and is- 
 largely consumed by the city of Paris, which is its natural market. 
 
 As showing the quality of the French Portland cements, the- 
 following reports will be of interest : 
 
 Portland cement made by Messrs. Darsy, Lefebvre & Lavocat. 
 Tests by Feret at Boulogne. 
 
 Setting Time. — Initial set, 3 degrees, 20 minutes; final set^ 
 9 degrees. 
 
 Fineness. — Two per cent, residue on sieve of 5,850 meshes- 
 per square iach; 22 per cent, residue on sieve of 32,500 meshe& 
 per square inch. 
 
 Tensile Tests. — Seven day neat, 550 pounds; 28 day neat, 730 
 pounds; 7 day, 1 to 3 sand, 270 pounds; 28 day, 1 to 3 sand,. 
 385 pounds. 
 
 Chemical Analysis. — Silica, 22.15 per cent.; alumina, 8.20 per 
 cent.; oxide of iron, 2.50 per cent.; lime, 63.60 per cent.; magnesia,. 
 0.85 per cent.; sulphuric acid, 1.20 per cent.; loss in calcina- 
 tion and undetermined, 1.50 per cent. 
 
 Portland cement made by Messrs. E. Candlot & Cie. 
 
 Setting Time. — Initial set, 1 degree 40 minutes; final set^ 
 3 degrees 0 minute. 
 
 Tensile Sti'ength. 
 2 days. 7 days. 28 days. 84 days. 6 monsv 
 
 Nieat cement v 384 lbs. 669 lbs. 752 lbs, 757 lbs. 707 IbSv 
 
 1 cement to 2 sand...' 296 " 498 " 553 " 589 " 610 " 
 
 1 cement to 3 sand 232 " 373 " 437 " 447 " 481 " 
 
 1 cement to 5 sand 112 " 202 " 236 " 267 " 301 " 
 
 Chemical Analysis. — Silica, 21.70 per cent.; alumina, 8.00 per- 
 cent.; peroxide of iron, 2.60 per cent.; lime, 63.85 per cent.; 
 magnesia, 0.72 per cent.; sulphuric acid, 0.60 per cent.; loss- 
 in calcination, 2.30 per cent.; elements undetermined, 0.23 per 
 cent. 
 
 41 
 
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 43 
 
THE 
 
 American Cement Industry* 
 
 After the publication in The Engineering 
 RECORD of the articles on the European Portland 
 Cement Industry, which are reprinted in the preced- 
 ing pages, many requests were received for descrip- 
 tions of the cement industry in the United States. 
 Accordingly, Mr. Frederick H. Lewis, M. Am. Soc. 
 C. E., was requested to begin the preparation of such 
 a series of papers, and up to the close of 1898 had 
 furnished the following : 
 
 Dec 18, 1897.— Coplay Plant, at Cop- 
 lay, Pa. 
 
 Jan 15, 1898 — I<awrence Cement 
 Co. (Bianewater Plant) 
 
 Feb. 5, 1898.— New York & Rosen- 
 dale Cement Co. (Rosendale 
 Plant) 
 
 April 2, 1898 —Milwaukee Cement 
 
 Co. (Plant No. 2). 
 April 30, 1898.— Bronson Portland 
 
 Cement Co. (Bronson, Mich.) 
 May 21, 1898 — Candlot Oscillating 
 
 Grate lor Cement Kilns. 
 
 July 16, 1898. — Empire Portland 
 Cement Co. (Warners, N. Y.). 
 
 Sept 10, 1898.— Natural Cement 
 Plant, at Speeds, Ind. 
 
 Oct. 15, 1898— Buckeye Portland 
 Cement Co. (Bellefontaine, O.). 
 
 Nov. 19, 1898. — Western Portland 
 Cement Co. (Yankton, S. D.). 
 
 Dec. 17, 1898.— The American Ro- 
 tary Kiln Process for Portland 
 Cement. 
 
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