OIL SEATING COAL

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1921, Page 11

OIL SEATING COAL

A LESSON. Kipling once wrote “The liner she’s n lady,” a description which may have keen implicatory or prophetic, for driven by coal she is a very uncleanly lady, 1 end only with the use of oil for prij pelling her through the waters does she I attain the full measure, of her beauty. The aesthetic nspeeft of the subject is, however, the least important at the present time when in every branch of industrial and domestic life economy ’8 urgent and imperative.

This is where oil fuel scores heavily. A ship, for instance, can take into her bunkers fuel oil sufficient to .give her an increased radius of movement ol 80 per cent, compared with that for (he same quantity of coal, and as 5 tons of oil will do the work of 8 tons of coal, it can readily be seen what an enormous saving we have here over a 2,000 or 3,000 miles journey. The huge ocean liners Aquitania and Olympic were recently converted into j oil-burners, and the result is that the I former, whose speed when she was run i by coal was 23| knots, steamed undei oil over 100 miles at a speed of 21 knots, showing that with the constant 1 and equable* heat maintained under oil ! great economy in time of transit can bt 1 secured. If we transform -the 80 per cent, referred to above into actual mileage, it means that if with 100 tons of coal the ship covers a distance of, say, 50 miles, on the -same quantity of oil she will travel no less than 90 miles. The average schoolboy can appreciate what thi« implies in fuel consumption. Another interesting point about oil > fuel is that no fewer thnn 7.000 tone can be loaded into a ship’s tanks hi the short space of six hours withoTit a touch of manual hvbor beyond at tachiiig the pipes from the tank on sho.-c jto the tanks in the ship. A similai i quantity of coal would occupy 46 houn to load if 150 tons per dealt with. H. North, in the Paily. Mailj