OIL BEATING COAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 158, 5 July 1921, Page 2

OIL BEATING COAL.

Kipling once wrote "The liner she's a lady," a description which may have been ' implicatory or prophetic, for driven by coal she is a very uncleanly lady, and only with the use of oil for propelling her through the waters does she attain the full measure of her bcautv.

The aesthetic aspect of the subject is, however, the least important at the present time when in every branch of industrial and domestic life economy i 3 urgent and imperative writes a "Daily Mail" correspondent. This is where oil fuel scores heavily. A ship, for instance, can take into her bunkers fuel oil sufficient to give her an increased radius of movement of 80 per cent, compared with that for the same quantity of coal, and as five tons of oil will do the work of eight tons ot coal, it can readily be seen what an enormous saving we have here over a, 2,000 or 3,000 miles journey. The huge ocean liners Aquitania and Olympic were recently converted into oil-burners, and the result is that the former, whose speed when she was run by coal was 23J knots, steamed under oil over 100 miles at a speed of 27 knots, showing that with the constant and equable heat maintained under oil great economy in time of transit can be secured.

If we transform the 80 per cent, referred to abbove into actual mileage, it means that if with 100 tons of coal the ship covers a distance of, say, 50 miles, on the same quantity of oil she will travel no less than 00 miles. The average schoolboy can appreciate what this implies in fuel consumption. Another interesting point about oil fuel is that no fewer than 7,000 tons can be loaded into a ship's tanks in the short space of six hours without a touch of manual labour beyond attaching the pipes from the tank on shore to the tanks in the ship. A similar quantity of coal would occupy 46 hours to load if 150 tons per hour were dealt with.

Of course, with oil burners, where it is merely a question of turning a small wheel or tap to regulate the supply of oil and air, the stokehold staff is reduced enormously, and the same thing occurs in the appliances required when coal is replaced by oil. There are no fire-bars or cleaning materials, no ash cruards, no shovels or fireirons of any description.

Cargo space is increased, under oil, by over 30 per cent. And the whole job of converting a ship to oil can be completed in three weeks.

But shipping is not the only industry which is turning away from coal.

Several large London power-houses, from which power is drawn for electric, railways and tramways, are converting a number of their furnaces to this derful liquid fuel.

Many main-line locomotives are already being driven by oil, and nearly all our great railway companies are gradually relieving themselves of their dependence on a fuel which they cannot rely on obtaining.