A SMOKELESS FUEL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 23 May 1928, Page 5

A SMOKELESS FUEL.

TRIAL IN AiANOHESTER. CHEAP AND HOT. Those who are concerned with the health of great communities realise more and more the importance of deal, ing with the problem of domestic smoke (says tlic Guardian”). Factory smoke has, to some extent, been reduced by legislation, and when a fog comes over Manchester now it is usually a yellow fog, not one of the old black variety. The reason for that, according -to Air B. M. Eoyvc, the technical, chemical and smoke inspector of the Alanehcster Corporation, is that domestic smoke is the agent rather than factory smoke. What th’is smoke is doing is illustrated by one striking figure which Air ltowe supplies; it is cutting out from the centre of Manchester so many ultra-violet rays that the city’s ration is not 50 per cent, of that of the suburbs.

What, then, can be done to reduce domestic smoke. Eor many years experiments on smokeless fuel have been in progress; and last week, at the conference in Manchester of the Smoke Abatement League of Great Britain, Dr. Veitch (Olark, the Manchester Medical Officer of Health, and. other speakers, lent-their authority t 6 the statement that a practicable smokeless fuel, called coalite, is now available for use in domestic grates. Mr Rowe gave to a representative of the “MaAehester Guardian” some account of the present standing of coalite.' WIIAT COALITE IS. It was the produet, he said, of a firm called Low Temperature Carbonisation, Limited, of London and Barnsley, and was the outcome of more than 25 years’ of experiment. It could be bought in |bags containing thrce-iquarters of la hundreweight which was claimed to be equal -to a hundredweight of coal. The bags cost 2s each. Coalitb could also be bought by the ton for about 345. At present about 350. tons a day was being produced at Barnsley. That was the full capacity of the plant; but that would be doubled by the end of June at a new pit-head scheme at Askern, near Doncaster. Out of a ton of coal the plant produced 14cwt. of coalite, 20-22 gallons of oil, and 6000 cubic feet of gas. Coalite, said Mr Rowe, had been tried by the Manchester Corporation, and the result of the experiment was no satisfactory that it was to be repeated on a more extended scale. “I understand,” Mr Rowe said, “that there will be a three months’ trial at the Town Hall, in civic buildings, and in the I hospitals.” Mr Rowe added that he had used coalite in his own home and could say that it was without doubt a success as a household fuel. It was clean to handle; it was easy to ignite; ■it left no clinkers but only a fine powder, and it gave out greater heat than coal. * AN INTERESTING SCIIEAIE.

Mr Rowe outlined an interesting scheme which, he said, the makers of coalite had in mind. It was probable that they would make this offer to cor. porations and other important bodies: “'-Wc will put down for you, at; our own cost, the plant necessary to make coalite. You- work it, finding the coal and the staff. A:'on give us the residuals — oils, tar, sulphate of ammonia, etc. — and you keep the coalite and the gas. At the end of, say, fourteen years, we step out, and you keep everything.” He did not know that that, offer had yet been made, but he believed that, coalite having now become .an unquestionable ‘commercial proposition,’ it would be made shortly.”