LIQUID COAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19737, 5 January 1927, Page 11

LIQUID COAL

TO BE USED INSTEAD OF PETROL The advent of a “New coal age” was hailed in a series of notable pronouncements by chemists, mining engineers, and fuel experts at the session of the international conference on bituminous coal held at Pittsburg on November 18. The world, all the speakers agreed, was now on the threshold of a new era in which it will be deemed a criminal waste to burn raw coal as fuel instead of first extracting the countless valuable chemical compounds which are far more valuable than heat from burning coal. Dr. R. Lessing, consulting engineer, London, dwelt on the appalling waste resulting in Britain from the burning of coal which was not cleaned. He calculated that the tonnage of ash in the yearly coal production in the United Kingdom exceeded by 25,000,000 tons the output of iron orc. The cost of the railway transport of this useless material amounted to £5,000,000. Add to this the cost of the handling of the ash, disposal and so forth, and it would be seen that the non-productive expenditure in Great Britain from the burning of coal ranged from £10,000,000 to £20.000.000. Mr Walter E. Trent, mining and me tallurgieal engineer, New York, deela od that the process of pulverising cor’ to the consistency of talcum powder, >••• that it becomes fluid when heated and runs like water, would be followed by the use of this new coal in internalcombustion engines instead of petrol. In a few weeks’ time the first motorengine to be operated by oil obtained by pulverising coal XM W