Electric Winding Engines and Producer Gas.

Progress, Volume I, Issue II, 1 September 1906, Page 311

Electric Winding Engines and Producer Gas.

The question of coal winding by electricity i-s at present receiving considerable attention m the South Wales coalfield, and one or two colliery companies have already taken practical steps m this direction Electric winding has been for some time in use in a small way at the Old Dyffryn and Fforchaman pits of the Powell-Dyffryn Company, but the most extensive scheme yet adopted is that of the Dyffryn-Rhondda Colliery, who are just now receiving the delivery of a huge electrically driven winding engine, and one or two other leading companies have similar schemes under consideration. Professor W. Galloway has recently been discussing the application of producer gas for these purposes. Up to the present, he states, the electric current for actuating winding engines of the Ilquer Siemens type with Koepe pulleys has been obtained from dynamos worked by steam engines, and to this combination is due the large consumption of fuel. The introduction during recent years of gas engines worked with producer gas appears to him to present a means

of working electric winding engines with a very much smaller fuel consumption. He considers that jf gas were applied in the first instance to driving a gas engine generating an electric current, and that electric current were then used for working the winding engine, this combination would appear to present a means of greatly reducing the amount of fuel consumed, and would, perhaps, make the electric winding engine so economical that its additional cost as compared with steam winding engines would be more than compensated for.