PUBLIC OPINION

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20732, 16 February 1939, Page 11

PUBLIC OPINION

As expressed by correspondents whose letters are welcome, but for whose views we have no responsibility. Correspondents are requested to write in ink. It is essential that anonymous writers enclose their proper names as a guarantee of good faith. Unless this rule is complied with, their letters will not appear. GAS GRID PITHEAD PLANT (To the Editor) Sir.—More than 4000 tons of coal per week will be the capacity of the pithead gas-producing plant, one of the largest of its kind in the world, cn which construction has begun by the £4,700,000 United Kingdom Gas Corporation at Hemsworth, Yorkshire. The gas-production unit will cost £350,000 to complete, and will mark the first major step towards the establishment of an underground gas grid serving 19 thickly-populated areas in Yorkshire. In the first stage alone the gas grid will represent a total capital investment of over £2.000,000, and will form the nucleus for a system that may eventually extend throughout Great Britain. Colonel \V. Moncrieff Carr, 0.8. E., T.A.. managing director of the United Kingdom Gas Corporation, looks to this scheme as the beginning of a series of similar schemes which, when fully developed, will provide the means of making industry in Britain not only independent of imported fuel supplies, but more economical through the use of the more efficient gas fuel. The Hemsworth carbonising unit will comprise a battery of 28 silica ovens arranged In parallel series. In these the coal is distilled. Coal from the Hemsworth pits, chosen for its high quality, will be carried straight from the pit washeries to eight 200ton bunkers adjoining the ovens, from which it will be automatically fed to the crushing mills and thence conveyed in the form of fine dust to a 1000-ton master-bunker. The coal will be fed into the carbonising ovens to emerge as gas, smokeless fuel, coke in graded sizes, tar, benzole, ammonia, sulphur, disinfectant fluids and many other by-products. High-pressure pipe lines will convey the gas to the 16 distributing centres which form the key points of the grid. The initial Hemsworth capacity geared to suit the industrial response to the grid plan will be 8,500,000 cubic feet per day. It would appear that we will have to look to the gas industry, which sets a standard of efficiency, for assistance in developing those secondary industries which call for a supply of heat in the conduct of their business in the future. No attempt has been made by the coal owners to cater for this business and offer technical help to it.s clients handling the raw coal. Rather the reverse. Since the latest screens have been installed the product in the form of slack creates new problems where a measure of thermal efilciency is aimed at. The price-cutting in operation when the railway contract was being tendered for is in the main responsible for the position to-day, in my opinion. The tendered price was unremunerative for steam coal, and industry outside the department has to make good the deficiency and meet successive increases in the price from time to time for an inferior product.—l am, etc., W. A. WILKINSON. Cambridge, February 13.