COAL COMES BACK

Evening Star, Issue 23373, 16 September 1939, Page 9

COAL COMES BACK

GROUND REGAINED FROM OIL “ Coal is being used ever more intelligently. It occurs to a larger number of consumers each year that it is potential heat that they are buying and not just so many tons of coal. They realise that a wider knowledge of different coals, with their varying characteristics and most appropriate applications, is required by them or their suppliers if the utmost heat value is to be extracted at the lowest possible cost,” says the annual report of the Coal Utilisation Council, printed in the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ “ It was realised that, on a long view, the most effective way of promoting the sale of British coal, although it might have the immediate effect of reducing consumption at a particular plant, was to assist consumers to obtain the best results, to teach them the advantages and economy of the right class of fuel married to the right appliance—to prove to them, in short, that by burning coal they could save money,” adds the report. It is stated that with the improvement in appliances and the careful preparation of coal for its varied markets coal is becoming, and, indeed, has now become, a highly flexible fuel, capable of the most efficient and economic use in manufacturing, in commercial heating, and in extensive categories of ships in our mercantile marine. “ The creation of means for the better use of coal and the ,manner in which the council has advertised them have checked the use of oil fuel in the heating of buildings and caused wholesale reversions to coal and its derivatives,” says the report. “ Only six years ago the novelty of a new and convenient method of controlling heating appealed strongly to a public that wap rapidly becoming oilminded; oil appeared to be the modern up-to-date form of fuel. It has now shown that coal, used in the latest appliances, can be burned smokelessly and stoked mechanically, with automatic control of temperatures. The business recovered and retained for coal or its derivatives with which the council’s engineers have been directly concerned from February, 1933, to March, 1939, is equivalent to an annual saving

to the coal industry of 769,000 tons. No account is taken in that figure of the changes effected directly by coal, coke, and appliance distributors, tha gas and electricity industries, and indirectly by the council’s propaganda. Taking everything into consideration, the annual saving is probably of th» order of 1,500.000 tons.

“ During the last year the number and importance of conversions from oil to solid fuel have greatly decreased, for the simple reason that there are now fewer plants to convert. Nevertheless, 64 conversions and nine preventions (of conversions from solid fuel to oil) are recorded, representing over 36,000 tons of new business per annum and the retention of 8.900 tons per annum. However, constant vigilance is still necessary to ensure that all new buildings and commercial undertakings have an opportunity of using coal or one or other of its derivatives. It still happens, though seldom, that buildings arc designed with no fuel storage or facilities for delivery or using solid fuel. In such cases, if the council is notified in time, it is sometimes possible to secure modifications.”-