OIL FROM COAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19787, 10 March 1927, Page 7

OIL FROM COAL

CHEAP PRODUCTION NEW PLANT AT MORWELL GREAT POSSIBILITIES. [By Telegraph—Ptt Prexs Assn.—Copyright-] LONDON, B. Electricity for next to nothing alongside the State works, Morwell, is the prospect held out by L. and N. Brown Coal Distillation Company, *if the prosent plans materialise. The company is the offshoot of the Sensible Heat Company. Already £125-, 000 has been subscribed privately. An Australian, Mr Bradstreet, who took the “Morning Post’’ coal miner migrants to Australia, returns to launch the Australian company, which has acquired deposits of coal at Morwell, estimated at 4,000,000 tons. The company hope's in six months to sell 1000 tons of coal daily till the distillation plant is completed, when from 1000 tons of coal it vgill daily turn out 28.500 gallons of oil. The system is to let In the coal &t the top end of an inclined retort with hot gas at the lower end, causing the coal to exude oil gases. The latter are then used in the distillation process, while the coal is rendered more combustible and is easily pulverised. It burns glowingly and smokelessly in an ordinary grate or fumh.ee box.

It is claimed that experiments have shown that this pulverised coal can be pumped through a pipeline like liquid fuel. The control of heat during the distillaton prevents the oil being “cracked” as in th£ German process. Experiments with Moorwell coal are said to have given results better than with German coal. Tests with New South Wales coal also yielded most hopeful results. • The company’s working plant at Barnsley turned out oil selling at 8d per gallon, the process giving a profit of 4s per ton on coal, (and distilled fuel residue is scllinug at 5s per ton. It is asserted that the analysis of the oil shows it contains petrol, paraffin, gas oil, lubricating oil, and also phenols.