In the August 1986 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman is a table of some commodities suitable as lading for covered hopper cars. Some of the commodities are a complete mystery to me and as to what uses they are used for? The commodities i am curious about in the table are Aplite ore, Baghouse fume, Bone black, Cell feed, Cyanamide, Ferro-silicon, Fitrel clay, Fine flint, Litharge, Silica gel catalyso, Silicate of soda, Whiting, and Wood Flour. Does anyone know what any of these commodities are used for? Most of them i can not find listed in any dictionaries.
Some of those are ores, or ore intermediates – Aplite, litharge, fine flint, Fitrel clay. Aplite, fine flint and Fitrel clay are used in ceramics, I think. Litharge is a lead intermediate – pigments, I would suppose. Baghouse fume comes from coal fired power plant filters, and is used in cement and concrete. Bone black is a kind of very pure charcoal – chemical industry, I would suppose. Good luck finding them, and let us know what you find out!
I can give you two of them right now, will research some of the others…
Silica gel is the the silica crystals you find in the little packet tucked in with your camera, VCR, most eletronic equipment.
It is a drying agent, absorbs moisture, also refered to as a desicent.
Slicate of soda, also know as water glass, is a perservetive.
Mixed with water, it forms a clear, slightly gelled liquid, which thickens and turns white over time.
Used to perserve organic materials, it is readily absorbed by leather, cloth, most porous materials.
Baghouse fume rings a distant bell, will get back to you on that one.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
Wood Flour is the very fine sawdust you get when sanding and is used where wood fiber is needed but not in the fiberous form (such as is needed for paper). It is a dust (not dirt type dust) and is highly explosive.
There are various bag house dusts. Those that are pure carbon can be used in any full carbon product such as the “ink” in your lazer printer. If it is highly contaminated such as bag house dust from a steel mill, it is sent to a recycler that can separate the various metals. The best of these companies is in Monterey, Mexico. Bag house dusts also come from the cleaning of grains (used in animal feed), wood flour(see above) and almost any air polution equipment collecting “solids” from the air.
Called a buddy, who is a history buff, who laughed at me…
Baghouse fumes is exactly what is says it is, fumes, (dust, particals, ect) generated in a “bag house”.
Turn of the century term, from when most commodities were bagged, flour, grains, things of that nature.
The dust created from this floats in the air, and is removed by big dust collectors, the funnel shaped things you see next to a lot of industries.
Some what like the sawdust collectors you see in large woodshops.
The term"baghouse fume" is now used to cover any of the dust created in manufacturing, and is collected in huge bins.
Due in part to the fineness, and the quanity, it cant be removed or disposed of on site, and you cant gather it up and put in in the trash can.
Imagine the dust you gather up in your household vacume cleaner, just huge quanities.
It is hard to ship by truck, you need a air tight water tight container.
So most industries ship it out to industrial waste sites via covered hoppers, because of the way you can load un load them, with air pressure or gravity feed.
The bell this term rang was from a few years(25 or so) ago, my buddy and I were looking through the old Moody Cotton press and warehouse on the Galveston wharves.
I noticed the huge collectors and storage bins, so we asked the manager what they were for.
He said they collect the baghouse fumes.
Which raised the question you used for the title of your post.
The “fumes” produced there were dust and dirt, plus cotton lint, which becomes airborn when the raw cotton is baled, or pressed, then wraped in burlap for shipment.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
You guys are great!
Cyanamid is a fertilizer
Bone black - animal charcoal
Whitening - calcium carbonate
Here are a few of my all-time favorites; some of them sound like ingredients for Harry Potter’s potions class, but they were all in use back “in the day.”
Acid of cretaceous - carbonic acid
Phlogisticated acid of vitriol - sulphurous acid
Columbian spirits - methanol
Crocus powder - ferric oxide
Digestive salt of silvius - potassium acetate
Lapis infernalis - fused nitrate of silver
Libavius’ fuming liquor - stannic chloride
Mirbane oil - nitrobenzol
Artificial oil of ants - furfural
Thenardite miribilite - sodium sulphate
Zapota gum - gum chicle
BTW, I wonder if PBS will develop a program called “This Old Baghouse?” Sorry,sorry,sorry. I couldn’t resist.
work safe
“This Old Baghouse” will be a new series on turning old and abandoned industries into high end tourist attractions, hotels and resturants. They started the “Roundhouse” episode in Baltimore but the roof fell in on them.
[:-,]
And it will be hosted by a rather obtuse, know it all, who has never really done any of the work he is describing, but sounds as if he wrote the book on it!
After a few seasons, the show will dump him in favor of a wimpy, somewhat geeky twerp, just as rude and dumb as the original host, who now sells hand tools and gizmos for a department store.
And of course, the show will be kept alive by the second bananas, the contractors who really do know what they are doing,
and at least one of them will create a spin off show called
“the New Yankee Baghouse”,
featuring hand crafted dust collectors copied from antiques.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
[#ditto]
Ed …VERY good! [^] [bow] [bow]
About half a century ago truckers were getting annoyed at the ability of railroads to file objections with regulatory agencies to just about every new commodity rate the truckers put in their tariffs. So just for a test the truckers filed a low rate on “Yak fat, NOIBN, and sure enough the railroads filed their arguments against it. NOIBN is an acronym for “not otherwise indexed by name."
Wait a minute - I’m looking that up in the Emergency Response Guide… Anybody know the UN number for it?
Here’s a link to the best information I can find on that “yak fat” incident:
We have a lot of plastic pellets through here.
We had a derailment here a couple years ago and spilled carbon black…what a mess…3 carloads full…eww