BROWN COAL BYPRODUCTS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 10306, 7 March 1922, Page 4

BROWN COAL BYPRODUCTS.

Erery day for a week there is being held in the premises of Messrs Booth, Mcdonald and Company, lnvercargill, a demonstration of a retort suitable for the extracton of by-products from brown coal,"peat or shale. The extractor is the invention of Mr H. M. McLeod, who designed one on similar lines during the war at the request of an Admiralty official, thiß being the time when the greatest difficulty was being experienced in getting oil supplies to England, owing to the activities of the U-boat's where tank steamers were concerned. Mr McLeod made a peat retort which greatly pleased the experts, but as the idea of bringing oil into the country in the water ballast tanks of crago-carriers proved wonderfully successful, it was never necessay to depend on supplies from within, Britain. The retort on view in luvercargill is the continuous typo, and, according to Mr McLeod, is much to be preferred to the intermittent types of coke retort in use in England. He states that tho coke-oven type takes from eight to twenty hours to treat the coal, while in his latest invention the coal is under continuous treatment, which increases as the heat in the retort increases. In the demonstration plant on view the coal pas3o? complotejy through the retort m under ten minutes, reaching a temperature of 400 degrees Centigrade, a temperaturo that can easily bo increased. To-day a reporter was shown about 50 samples of cloths that have been dyed in different colours by one of the extracts from Southland coal that were treated in the rotort. The same dye was used in each case, and the variety in the shades and colours is attributablo to the difference in the materials and the times of immersion. Extracts that are to be seen pouring or trickling from tho taps are naptha, alcohol, benzol, paraffins, lubricating oils and greases. The demonstration was opened last week, when the Mayor referred to the importance that tho success of the new industry would be to Southland and the rest of the Dominion.