Learning on ScreenNational Story - OUT OF THE ASHES
Series
- Series Name
- Mining Review 19th Year
Issue
Story
- Story No. within this Issue
- 1 / 3
- Summary
- BFI synopsis: the fine ash produced by power stations is put to good use in building.
NCB Commentary - When the Romans built, they built to last. And the mortar they used in the Colosseum was made of volcanic ashes.
In industry through the years, getting rid of ash has always been a problem. Most of it was sent to waste.
But things are different today. Power stations burn millions of tons of coal. It’s burned at very high temperatures - liek inside a volcano. And the fine ash that comes out is being put to good use. They call it pulverised fuel ash - PFA for short - and it can be blown straight out of the furnaces into storage hoppers.
Laboratory scientists found that mixing the PFA with lime and water gave a rock-hard product with innumberable uses in building and engineering.
So today, power station ash lives on to serve industry in a new way.
In the Welsh mountains this dam is made from concrete using PFA. It’s strong - it has to be - and it has a beauty of its own.
PFA straight from the power stations, mixed with water, is being used as structural fill for road embankments and in foundations. It’s so strong and sets so hard that bulldozers have been known to smash their blades on it.
PFA goes into structural concrete.
And into the road foundation of our new motorways - built to take a pounding.
PFA is being manufactured into building blocks, too. All around the country you can see the evidence of its presence rising into the new British skyline.
Coal, the power stations and scientific know-how are making a new Britain. - Keywords
- Buildings and structures
- Written sources
- British Film Institute Databases Used for synopsis
The National Archives COAL 32 /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963
- Credits:
-
- Sponsor
- National Coal Board
- Production Co.
- National Coal Board Film Unit
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