Abstract
THE report of the Fuel Research Board for the year ending March 31, 1935, differs from its predecessors in the emphasis given to problems arising from the preparation of coal for sale. This follows naturally on the changes taking place at British collieries, where increasing proportions of coal are obtained by mechanical methods, and are also subjected to various cleaning processes. Again, consumers become more reluctant to pay a premium for size. Apart from the open fire, there are few uses for large lump coal. It is the modern tendency to employ automatic mechanical methods of firing boilers, furnaces and producers, and for such uses coal must be small in size and uniformly graded. Formerly, small coal was often deliberately rejected by the use of forks for loading underground. To-day collieries are increasingly finding it necessary to break lump coal to supply the demand for small fuel, and this has brought into prominence many chemical and physical problems previously unknown. The best methods of breaking to preserve sizes and avoid the production of dust have been investigated. Coals broken and graded suitably at the colliery were found to suffer little further degradation in normal transport to the consumer.
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H., H. Fuel Research. Nature 139, 517 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139517a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139517a0