COAL CARBONIZATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 January 1928, Page 7

COAL CARBONIZATION

A MARVELLOUS INVENTION INDUSTRY REVOLUTIONISED ? (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.! (By Cable—Press Assn.—Copyright.) LONDON, January 12. The first public demonstration of the Dvorkovitz system of coal carbonization, was given at Slough. The process heats coal by means of the introduction in the top vertical retorts of highly pre-heated neutral gas. The temperature inside the retort is kept at 500 degrees centigrade. Neutral gas passes down the retorts, carrying with it the constituents separated from coal by means of heat, and escapes from the bottom of retorts, where it is collected in condensers. The inventors claim that two commercial units at Slough, each treating five tons of coal daily, will show the following average yield from a ton of bituminous coal: — Four gallons motor spirit, twelve of lamp oil, six of lubricatig oil, twentyfour pounds paraffin wax, forty of phenol, ninety of pitch, twenty-four each of ammonia and sulphur, leaving the residue of fifteen hundredweight of smokeless fuel of high calorific value.

It is claimed that the invention will give collieries a profit of seven shillings a ton, and reduce the coal bills of per cent. electricity and gas works by 25 to 30 Dvorkovitz is a Russian, who has lived most of his life in Britain. Before the war he was consultant oil expert to the Shell and Anglo-Persian Companies. He made a fortune of eighty thousand pounds, which he invested in oilfields and elsewhere in Russia. At the request of Britain, he returned to Russia in wartime in connection with the Red Cross. Bolshevik revolutionaries confiscated his property and gaoled Dvorkovitz. He was thrice sentenced to death, but was each time reprieved at, the last minute. The Bolsheviki ultimately employed him to perfect the carbonization process at the Moscow Gas Works. , He escaped to England, penniless in 1921, through the instrumentality of the British Foreign Office.