PRODUCER GAS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 221, 17 September 1940, Page 10

PRODUCER GAS.

Motoring Notes.

USE IN AUSTRALIA. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES. An issue of the "Sydney Daily Telegraph" containing a page "and a-half of articles on producer gas and advertisements for producer gas plant, seems to indicate that commercial exploitation of the gas as a substitute for petrol in road vehicles has reached a much more advanced stage in Australia than it lias in New Zealand. Ten different brands of equipment are advertised, and include four different types of plant. The newspaper predicts in articles that producer gas will come to be regarded as a regular fuel for vehicles after the war, and not merely something to be resorted to in emergency. Engines will be designed to use producer gas, which burns more slowly in the cylinders than petrol vapour, and the producers themselves will be built into the chassis of cars without spoiling their appearance. Special attention is paid to the matter of fuel. fuel in the form of small briquettes may soon be packed in neat paper bags and sold at garages and stores in Australia. The New South Wales Forestry Commission is using steel kilns, which require little atten" tion, in the manufacture of large quantities of charcoal. This fuel is recommended for the present because the quantity available is not restricted to the output of established plants as arc suppliers of "char" and special coke. Advantages of having available supplies of suitable fuel derived from the carbonisation of coal, however, are such to encourage further investigation, and work in that direction is being actively pursued, close contact being maintained with investigations in Great Britain.