STREAMLINED PATTERN FOR COAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 301, 21 December 1945, Page 6

STREAMLINED PATTERN FOR COAL

THE BRITISH INDUSTRY KEID REPORT AND ITS COMPLICATIONS (By Dr. George Gretton.) (Special) London, Dec. 16 Much of the reconstruction of Britain’s coal industry which will take place during the post war years will be based on a technical report published earlier this year by the Ministry of Fuel and Power, containing a brilliant analysis of coalmining in the United Kingdom, with a detailed plan lor technical improvements. Generally known as the Reid Report, it subjects the industry to a most searching criticism. At the same time the authors pay tribute to the greatness of the race of men who have built up Biitain’s mining industry. "The years of which we write and the years which came before were the days of the pioneer," says the report. "The thriving industries of the biggest exporting country in the world needed coal and yet more coal, and a large coal export trade was built up, which contributed greatly to the national wealth and wellbeing. The employers and mining engineers, who made this possible were hardworking, adventurous and self-reliant men. They were hard taskmasters but they worked hard themselves. They believed in competition and were prepared to meet it." It goes on: "We would pay tribute to the old miner too. He also worked hard and played his part, in helping to build this great industry. When we come to point out. mistakes made in these early years of the coalmining industry let us beware of being wise merely after the event, or of withholding praise due to a great race of men—employers, mining engineers, workmen and machinery makers alike.” The chief defects pointed out by the Reid Report are the insufficient degree of mechanisation—not so much in coalcutting as in conveying—the low average output per mine due to the dispersal of coalfields among too many different owners, and psychological disability among miners. Added to this comes the natural difficulty that on the whole British mines having been worked longer than any other tend to be deeper, so that more time and manpower arc required to convey coal to the surface. REPLACEMENT OF EQUIPMENT The remedy for the first fault is already being developed. This is the replacement of equipment required for coal-cutting, loading, drilling and shotfiring by a single machine. Three main types of this machine have been developed in Britain during the past few years. They are the "cutter-

loader,” on which experiments were being made just before the second World War. and which has been completely redesign'd during the past three years; the "slabbing" machine, another British design which will soon be in operation; and the "skipping" machine, a self-propelling cutting and loading machine worked by hydraulic or pneumatic pressure. The dispersal of coalfields among a large number of ymall owners will be remedied by a general re-organisation consequent on the nationalisation of coalmines, which is also likely to have a profound effect on the psychological attitude of the miners. The feeling, ’..diether justified or not, that they are being exploited by the coalowner must clearly give way when they themselves, with the rest of the nation, become the owners. Finally, the intensified mechanisation of coal conveying will solve the third problem. Cutting is already quite highly mechanised, but Ihe structure of British coal deposits requires a higher mechanisation of conveying than elsewhere, and Mr. Shinwell, Britain’s Minister of Fuel and Power, has stressed this need. Side by side with technical development in the coal industry itself goes development in the scientific utilisation of coal. The science of fuel research has been steadily intensified in Britain over the nasi thirty years, until to-day the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, working .with various Industrial Research Organisations and the Government's Fuel Research Board, disposes of the greatest body of knowledge in its field anywhere in the world The activities of these research bodies range from increasing the simple efficiency of coal as a fuel to the development of by products from coal to form the rawmaterial basis of a huge plastics industry. In effect, they are steadily increasing the value of coal. ELECTRICITY USES COAL

Nearly twenty million tons of coal a year are used by the electricity generating stations of Britain. Between 1920 and 1935 British technicians succeeded in so increasing the efficiency ol generating process that they increased the number of kilowatts produced per ton of coal by 120 per cent. Thus every ton of coal mined to-day is for this purpose worth 2.2 Lons mined 25 years ago. Further developments in this direction are under way. The same technique is at work in various other fields of coal utilisation. In the utilisation of coal for gas a further important, factor comes into play. Carbonisation, which forms its basis, released an immense range of new raw materials as by-products. For example, coal tar, of which Britisn carbonisation industries produced about, two million tons a year before the war, is the parent of over 2,000 substances. It therefore provides the raw materials for a large group of important industries. These include benzol. synthetic dyes (pioneered by British scientists as early as the middle of the 19th century) medical products, including aspirin, anaesthetics and malaria drugs, and the famous sulphanamides (including M. and B. 693) and literally hundreds of others, perfumes, tar acids used for disinfectants, soaps, tooth-powders and fertilisers. Above till they include plastics—one of the great developing! industries of the 20th century. COAL MAKES MANY THINGS

A wide range of articles from am lil ial silk stockings, tooth-brushes air tobacco pouci.cs to telephone . cup>

furniture and aircraft parts come horn coal, and the range is bein; rapidly widened. Recently the Director of the Coal Utilisation Reseat'd

Association was able to state tha -.hen security permits publication o all the results of British research inb ‘.ho uses of coal it will be found tha Britain is in this respect ahead of a! other countries. It is no exaggerate to say that coal joined in Britain tc day is potentially ■ far more valuabl national asset than even in the da> when it motivated the Industrie revolution.