FUEL AND POWER

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 10 March 1927, Page 5

FUEL AND POWER

AT LOW COST. USE OF PULVERISED COAL. NEW SCHEME FOR AUSTRALIA. CABLE—.PRESS ASSOCIATION—COP YRIGH'J. LONDON, March 8. Electricity for next to nothing, generated alongside the State works at ALorwell, is a. prospect held, out by the L. and N. Brown Coal Distribution Company if its present plans materialise. The company is an offshoot of the Sensible Heat Company. Already £125,000 has been subscribed privately. An Australian named Bradstreet, who took the ‘‘London Morning Post” coal miner immigrants to Australia, will return to launch the Australian company, which has acquired deposits of coal at Morwell estimated at 4,000,000 tons. The company hopes that in six months it will be moving daily 1000 tons over burden, and then sell 1000 tons of coal daily till the distillation plant has been completed. Then from 1000 tons of coal it will daily turn out 28,500 gallons of oil. The system is to let in the coal at the top end of an inclined retort, with hot gas at the lower end, causing the coal to exude oil and gases. The latter are then used in the distillation process, while the coal is rendered more combustible, and easily pulverisaible. It burns with a glow, and without smoke, in an ordinary grate or furnace box. It is claimed that- experiments have shown that this pulverised coal can be pumped through a pipe line like liquid fuel. ' . Control of the heat during distillation prevents the oil being “cracked,” as in" a similar German process. Experiments with Morwell coal are said to have given results better than German coal tests. New South Wales coal has also yielded most hopeful results. The company’s working plant. at Barnsley has turned out oil. selling at Rd per gallon ; the process gives profit of 4s per ton on coal and distilled fuel, and the residue sells at 5s per ton.

It is asserted that an analysis of the oil shows that it contains .petrol, paraffin, gas. oil, Diesel oil, lubricating oil, also phenols.