Abstract
THE “Russia Today” Press Service has issued a statement of the progress of work on this problem during the last few years ip. the U.S.S.R. It is recalled that Mendeleeff envisaged this method of fuel treatment, and about a generation ago Sir William Ramsay suggested the initiation of research thereon in Great Britain. In the U.S.S.R., however, the first practical work was begun in 1933 on the gasification of the coal in tlie seam. This is reached by two shafts connected by a tunnel cut through the seam itself. The coal is gasified by a blast of air or oxygen and steam blown down one shaft while the hot gas produced is collected from the up-cast shaft. This method necessitates the labour of miners to sink the shafts and to tunnel the seam before gasification can begin. In a new installation in the Donetz coalfield, the seam will be reached by bore holes so that no underground work will be necessary. Last November a plant, it is said, started operation on an industrial scale in the Moscow coal area to supply gas for chemical manufacture. A new installation in the Donetz coal field is expected to dispense with the services of five hundred miners. Where oxygen is employed to enrich the blast and so produce a gas of higher calorific value and lower nitrogen content, the cost of the separation of oxygen from air largely determines the economics of the process. It is claimed that Prof. P.(L. Kapitza has designed a plant for air separation which marks an advance in technical efficiency.
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Underground Gasification of Coal in the U.S.S.R. Nature 147, 477–478 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147477c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147477c0