MOTOR SPIRIT FROM COAL.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 83, 20 March 1928, Page 9

MOTOR SPIRIT FROM COAL.

SCOTSMAN CLAIMS SUCCESS OF EXPERIMENT. A development of very considerable importance to Great Britain in general and the iron and steel trades in particular is announced by Mr. AV. Hunter, engineer of Edinburgh (states a Glasgow paper). At a recent meeting of the West of Scotland Iron and Steel Institute Mr. Hunter said h e was privileged to announce to the members and the press for the first time the discovery and advent of a new process which successfully extracts motor spirit from eoal while the latter is being consumed.

I h© invention, known as the Strubin plant, obtains from Scottish small coal an oil which is almost entirely motor spirit, requiring little refining. In Great Britain he said, where the annual consumption of petrol exceeds GOOO million gallons and is rapidly increasing this i g a matter demanding th© serious attention of all. Hitherto, the extraction of oil as a by-nroduct of coal was generally regained as an improbable development Mr. Hunter described how at his instigation some two years agn he had had set up a hitherto unequalled plant in the East of Scotland for experimenting with by-products. He had been successful, he said in extracting oil from coal for the first time. Th© Shell Company he stated, renuested that some of the oil he sent for. refining and testing It was ultimately found to “compare more than favourabtv with anv natural strajn-ht-riin molor Tn concluding. Mr Hunter exnressed the belief that the develonmcni of the plant rests entirely with Scottish roa.l masters and with the iron and steel trn'L. whose furnaces are guiltv of wasting an enormous ■nnnunt of good material.