NO SMOKING

Series

Series Name: Mining Review 9th Year

Issue

Issue No.

Date Released

Feb 1956

Stories in this Issue:

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: the production of smokeless fuel
NCB Commentary - The recent example of the city of London falling into line with other major industrial centres in declaring itself a smokeless zone highlights the urgent need which exists in Britain for vastly increased quantities of fuel that won’t foul the skies and the air we breath.
Weigh smoke that hangs in the sky over Britain, if you could, and you’d have 2 million tons of solid filth in a year. The production of new smokeless fuels is an issue on which coal industry scientists have progress to report. Best known of the smokeless fuels, of course, is coke, a by-product of the production of gas from coal.
Coke is also directly produced by the coal industry. Bake coal in an over so that the gas and by-products are driven off, and you get cascades of white hot coke for industrial or domestic use. But it takes rather more than 2 tons of coal to produce 1 ton of coke. And not all coals can be turned into coke.
Some kinds of coal which won’t coke but are fairly smokeless can be turned into useful solid fuel by the Phurnacite process. Already in large scale production, Phurnacite is a bricquetted fuel made by pressing coal and pitch together into a convenient shape and then baking the product, just like in a coke oven, to drive off the pitch and by-products.
But, as we know, more British coal is smoky, and nearly a third of the nation’s production can’t be used for coke or Phurnacite making.
Now, at Stoke Orchard, coal industry scientists have discovered ways of turning the smokiest raw coal into a safe smokeless fuel. In the labroratory, here are some of the processes they carry out.
Blow air through fine coal and it behaves as if it were a liquid. You can pour it from one container into another. The liquidised coal is warmed, bound together with pitch, and then made smokeless by being heated in very hot sand, to drive off the smoke-producting ingredients. The process has been developed until it is now continuous.
Already a full scale pilot rpoduction plant for the new fuel is in operation, to prove that it is an economic commercial proposition.
When these new fuels are available in sufficient quantity they will meet two urgent needs, or making Britain a cleaner place to live in and of putting to good use the increasing proportion of fine coal produced by modern mining methods.

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded on 9 January 1956.

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