COAL CARBONIZATION.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 January 1928, Page 2

COAL CARBONIZATION.

A NEW PIUiOKSS, (Australian & N.Z. Cable Association.) LONDON, Jan. 12. The first public demonstration of the Rvorkovitz system of coal carbonisation was given at Slough. The process heats the coal by means of the introduction in the top vertical retorts, of highly preheated neutral gas. The temperature inside the retort is kept at five hundred degrees centigrade. Neutral gas passes down the retorts carrying with it constituents separated from the coal by means of the beat and csetipes from the bottom of the retorts, where it is eollected in condensers. The inventor claims that two commercial units at Slough, each treating five tons of coal daily, show the following average yield from a ton of bituminous coal is four gallons of motor spirit, twelve of lamp oil, six of lubricating oil, 24 pounds of paraffin wax, forty of phenol, ninety of pitch, twen-ty-four each of ammonia and sulphur, leaving a residue of fifteen hundredweight of smokeless fuel of high calorific value. It is claimed that the invention will give collieries a profit of seven shillings a ton and reduce Die coal hills of electricity and gas works 25 to JO percent.

Dvorkovtiz is a Russian, who has lived most of his life in Britain. Before the war he was consultant oil expert to the Shell and Anglo-Persian Companies. Pie made a fortune of £BO,OOO which he invested in oilfields and elsewhere in Russia. At the request of Britain he returned to Russia in wartime, in connection with Red Cross. Bolsheviks revolutionaries confiscated his property and gaoled Dvokovtiz. He was thrice sentenced to death, hut was each time reprieved at the last minute. Bolsheviks ultimately employed him to perfect the carbonisation process at Moscow gas works. He escaped to England penniless in 1921 by the instrumentality of the British Foreign Office.