THE FUTURE OF COAL

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1784, 20 July 1926, Page 6

THE FUTURE OF COAL

AN INTERESTING REVIEW. The coal crisis in Great Britain is not of a kind that will create any degree of hopefulness in regard to the future of the industry. The use of coal is being threatened, in several ways. In all progressive countries that have water power available hydro-electric schemes are being extended. Steam traction is being more and more superseded by motor vehicles driven by internal combustion engines aiding petrol. Experiments are now being made even with oil-driven railway locomotives. The increasing cost of production of coal in Great Britain has raised the price so much that foreign sales are declining with a corresponding decrease in Britain's outward shipping v trade.

What, then, is to be the future of coal? The Spectator has answered this question thus: "The dssential trouble in the coal industry is the falling off in the demand for coal. The extended use of electricity, oil, coke, water power, plus an epoch of trade depression, have combined to produce thi. s diminution. What is the remediy? Increase 'the demand for coal. But how can it be accomplished? By converting our coal into what is fast becoming the fuel of the age—oil. If we converted coal into oil at, or as near as possible to, the pit's mouth, as we already do partially in the case of gas or electricity, we should have solved our problem. By into oil, and using the British coal-oil instead of Mexican, or Persian, or Pennsylvaniah petroleum, we should immensely increase the demand for coal, and so find that new market for which the mining industry is pining." A beginning has been made in Lancashire along the lines that are advocated by the .Spectator. It may seem strange that this change of treatment has been so slow in coming. Great Britain has already spent millions of poundfe in securing the rights of oilfields in Persia, Mesopotamia, and Burmah. It is quite possible that if 1 per cent of this money had been spent in the United Kingdom in perfecting the process of converting her own coal into oil it would have made it possible for her to get all the oil she needed from her own resources, and would also have made a demand for her own coal. The conversion of coal into oil yields a useful by-product, a • cheap, smokeless fuel which will burn without any waste in an open grate or furnace This fuel would, if pulverised, be well adapted for giving either power or heat. The. increasing use pf oil may, therefore, hasten the long-desired change in the treatment of coal. Scientists have for more than fifty years condemned coal as both wasteful and. unhygienic. Messrs Gray and Turner, declared in "Eclipse of the Empire" that " the coal of Great Britain, unrivalled in quality, if economically won and,lscienti'fically used, would give us the cheapest power on earth. The aplication of unrestricted labour and scientific process to our coal would they said, "not only make u,s fabulously rich but also wondrously clean." Improved methods of treating coal in the United Kingdom would change the entire face of the Black Country, and the otherwise beautiful landscape of "Merrie England."

It is suggestive to notice a parallel in the history of the development of" electric light and of illumination by gas. Abo<Ujt 1880 electric light first threatened to become a serious competitor with coal gas for lighting purposes. But the very process which improved the electric light or carbon filament lamp suggested a greater improvement in the method, of burning gas. The competition of electric light with gas stimulated gas engineers to the discovery of a fresh, scientific, and economical method of burning the gas. Similarly, the increasing use of oil as a fuel, and as a motive power, is now stimulating steam plant engineers to a more scientific, use of coal. This has already been the case in England and Scotland to a considerable degree, and to a greater degree in the United States.. There are now more than three hundred large power plants in the United States that burn pulverised coal, or mechanical gas, as it is called. 1 Further, the use of coal gas for industrial heating has lately increased, as much as 100 per cent in a year. The coal gas industry ,therefore, is not yet at the end of its day of usefulness; and we cannot get coal gas without a supply of coal. But the strangest result of the extension of, electrical schemes is that electrical power falls back on even inferior coal to assist it. Germany has recently discovered a method of.using her large fields of lignite to generate power which is transmitted electrically. It is said that fully one half of the electrical power in that country is based on the use of lignite An electrical scheme which aims at supplying power >to more than half the State of Victoria depends very largely upon the use of immense beds of lignite at Yallourn. The Director of the 'Geological Survey of the United Sta|es recently pointed out that in spite of hydro-electrical development "• each year water power is meeting a decreasing proportion of the increasing public demand'for power, simply because in the eastern part of the

United States, where most of the power is required, steam power plants are more economical than the water power still undeveloped."