SMOKELESS FUEL
In an article on London air and Ihe problem of preventing its pollution by smoke, Sir Napier Shaw stated that coal carbonised at a low temperature would meet the case and supply a smokeless fuel that would burn in ordinary grates and kitchen ranges. But the difficulty is, says a correspondent of: the London Times, that no process of manufacturing such fuels has been evolved which has been proved to bo commercially practical when considered in all its bearings. Many years ago Colonel Scott-Monehieff proposed to make a fuel which, while being deprived of smoke-forming constituents, would yet retain enough volatile matter to ignite easily, by heating coal in an ordinary* gas retort at the temperature usually employed in gas manufacture, but withdrawing the charge when only half the normal amount of gas had been evolved. Some attempts have been made to put this process and variations of it into operation, hut with little success. Low-tem-perature carbonisation is a different matter, though it can trace its descent from Seott-Monehieff's idea. It depends on heating the coal only to about half the temperature commonly used in gasworks, and it has the attraction that, though the yield of gas is much smaller, by-products like fuel oil and motor spirit are obtained in larger quantities; but it cannot be carried put in ordinary gasworks retorts. Even were the technical problem of manufacture satisfactorily solved, very large economic problems would still have to he faced if the 35,000,000 tons of coal now used annually in Britain are submitted to lowtemperature carbonisation. Enormous quantities of by-products would he produced, and would be hound to ha ve a great'effect on the by-product market . The capital outlay required for the plant would also he very large, probably of the order of 30 or 40 millions sterling.
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2344, 20 October 1921, Page 4
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301SMOKELESS FUEL Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2344, 20 October 1921, Page 4
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