THINGS WE GET FROM GOAL.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 July 1921, Page 3

THINGS WE GET FROM GOAL.

Most pcopl e understand bow vital to the nation is an adequate supply of c«al 1 for use as fuel, hut only a few of the ! general public realise bow important, j not only to our industrial life, but also to our private life and health, is the supply of the various chemical products obtained from coal, writes “Analyst” in the “Daily Mail.” J The housewife using ammonia in the washtuh little thinks that it has come I from coal, or that the dyes used on the j bright-coloured fabrics she washes have | been obtained from the same source. I The artilleryman seldom realises that the “T.N.T.” (tri-nitro-foloul) in his I shells has boon manufactured from coal products; or the nurse that the soothing drugs she administers are many of them prepared from one or other of the compounds derived from coal. Nevertheless. this is so. When coal is distilled to produce gas for lighting purposes, ammonia, sulphur compounds, and. most important, tar. are among the by-products obtained. Similar products are also obtained when coal is converted into special foundry coke at the coke-ovens. The tap is broken up by distillation into a wide range of aromatic organic compounds. Erom these simpler products of distillation, by various chemical processes, are produced an unlimited number of compounds. Solvents and motor spirits, antiseptics, intermediate products for tile dye industry (and from these the finished colours, high explosives, and healing drugs) are among the 'numberless things produced. qho 'motorist, steering his benzoldriven ear over a tar-sprinkled road, seldom considers that benzol and tar are both derived from the same source as the pink disinfectant powder which the corporation’s sanitary man has just sprinkled round the grating in tbo gutter at* the road side. Sitting round the lire in our drawin,, rooms we do not often meditatp on the fact that the colours used to dye the carpet made have come originally front the same pit as the coal blazing merrily on the fire. Tn wars of the future, which must of necessity be largely chemical wars, an adequate supply of coal products will 1> 0 essential not only to our supply of some poisonous gases, as well as many of the antiseptics and drugs which help the surgeon to perform bis marvels on the shattered bodies of tip, lighters.