FUEL RESEARCH

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 97, 17 January 1918, Page 6

FUEL RESEARCH

IMPORTANT INVESTIGATION IN BRITAIN.

The Deportment of Scientific and Industrial Research, through which the Imperial Government is utilising the skill and knowledge of some of the Empire's foremost men of science, created a Fuel Research Board for the studv of improved methods of using coal'and other fuel. This board has produced an important report, its cluer recommendation bein C the establishment of a fuel research station in tho United Kingdom. A copy of the report lias reached His Majesty's irade Commissioner for New Zealand. The board believes that the burning of coal in its native state for the production of steam in tens of thousands of individual power plants does not conduce either to economy or efficiency. It considers that the line of inquiry it has been following is justified by the demands for cheaper and more ample supplies of electrical energy, for home supplies of oil fuel for the iSavy, for motor spirit for the transport and air services, and for smokeless domestic fuel "The onlv development which would satisfy all these needs simultaneously," savs the board, "would be tie replacement of a large proportion of the raw roal which is at present burned in boilers, furnaces and domestic fires by manufactured funis prepared from' raw coal by submitting it to distillation. The question of tl.e moment is to what extent can ami cni"ht the present use of raw <:oa be replaced bv the use of one or other of the various forms of fuel manufactured from coal, that is, coke., briquett<Ae of general interest. The boiud proposes that a fuel, research statron shall be established in order that experiments may be made i-onstm Uy y trained scientific- men in tho .treatment of roul for the distillation of oil, tho production of motor spirit, gas; roke, and other products. A s<to loi the Station M.™ been selected in London in the neighbourhood of one of the-, there. The station is He J to be nt work in the near future and the results oF its operations will be or importance to the whole Empire.