CHAPTER XVI
RECLAIMING 321,000,000 GALLONS OF LIQUID FUEL FROM COAL
It has been said, doubtless with a good deal of truth, that Britain owes her manufacturing prosperity to her abundant domestic resources of fuel. But, in the exploitation of our coal reserves, we emulate the rat in the corn-bin. We waste quite as much, if not more, than we ever use. The country around our collieries is disfigured with huge dumps, among which are thousands of tons of what is really low-grade fuel. Occasionally a tip-heap will catch fire, to burn sullenly for weeks and months. One such large dump in the United States burned uninterruptedly for years. This would not be possible if there were not present a large volume of combustible matter—coal—associated with the so-called useless material.
The colliery tip-heaps, while formidable in the aggregate, and representing a crushing indictment against our so-called advanced scientific attainments, merely constitute one, and a minor, tangible illustration of the great coal-waste issue. No matter in what direction we may turn in this colossal industry, we find evidences of improvidence and stupendous losses in varying degree.
It is a matter for speculation whether any other raw material is so prolific of residuals as coal. Oil is probably the solitary exception, but then petroleum is closely allied to the solid fuel. But refuse in regard to coal is equally ambiguous. The wastes vary so widely in nature, while each grade of residue possesses its individual possibilities. We are disposed to pride ourselves upon the big strides we have made in our exploitation of these residues but, as a matter of fact, we have barely touched the Aladdin’s lamp which it represents.
To render full justice to the coal-waste issue in all its kaleidoscopic forms would absorb many volumes. The subject is so vast and complex. It is my intention, within the scope of this chapter, to confine myself to one specific substance derived from coal, one which we persistently declined to consider in its real aspect until the fight for national existence applied the sledge-hammer blows to drive into our heads that we were guilty of criminal neglect. Why we should have required this drastic force to compel us to admit our indifference towards a great national asset it is difficult to explain. Our most formidable rival in trade had been sparing no effort for years to achieve an overwhelming industrial triumph therewith and to our discomfiture.
As I have previously remarked, Germany revelled in our junk piles and rubbish-heaps. The French chiffonnier never raked over the contents of a Parisian dust-bin more assiduously than did the German rummage among our waste dumps. He was not too proud to bear away what we disdained and rejected. It served as food to maintain the colossal plants, equipped with elaborate and costly machinery, which he laid down. We, on our part, were not backward in paying him, directly and indirectly, to work up our wastes, especially those from coal, and were ever ready to acquire the articles manufactured therefrom and at any price he felt disposed to quote.
While, to a certain degree, we have become wiser in our generation, and are handling our coal resources and the residuals resulting therefrom with less prodigality, we are still woefully improvident in this field. The degree of waste, despite the reforms introduced, has become accentuated essentially because of the increased magnitude of this industry. The blind adherence to typically British methods and ideas has led to some striking anomalies which to other nations must appear almost incredible. For instance, the coming of the high-speed, internal combustion motor emphasized the need for a volatile liquid fuel. Experience proved the hydro-carbon, petrol, to be most eminently adapted to the purpose. But Britain, as every one knows, has so far proved to be as barren of paying petroleum deposits as is the Sahara of cornfields. So, as we could not produce petrol, we decided to buy it from abroad, and continue to do so to this day.
Yet we need never have bought a single gallon from a foreign country, to keep our huge fleets of motor-omnibuses, taxi-cabs, touring cars, lorries, vans, agricultural tractors, and motor-boats moving. If we were as wideawake as we ought to be we should cease to buy a further pennyworth from beyond the confines of the Empire forthwith, turning the millions sterling we spent annually in this connection into the pockets of our own workers and industries. It would not involve the withdrawal of a single vehicle, and we should have the satisfaction of knowing that we were absolutely independent of the foreigner in a matter of most vital concern to the community—transport.
The domestic analogue to imported petrol is benzol, the volatile hydrocarbon coaxed from our old friend, King Coal. From the motoring point of view this derivative from the mineral fuel is capable of fulfilling every purpose in regard to transport which petrol can or ever will do. Why we still refrain from setting out to recover this spirit to the uttermost ounce, notwithstanding the lessons taught by the war, is beyond comprehension. There are some kinks in British mentality which defy all unravelling. The exploitation of liquid fuel from coal is one of them.
If we turn to the trading figures for the fiscal year 1913 we find that we imported petrol to the extent of 100,588,017 gallons for which we paid £3,803,397—$19,016,985. This money was sent out of the country. Even our Dominions did not reap much benefit from our liberality. Turning to the other side of the account we find that during the self-same period we sold to foreign purchasers 30,415 gallons of motor spirit made in the United Kingdom, and valued at £1,420—$7,100! Our delightfully unbusinesslike way of doing things left us £3,801,977—$19,009,885—on the wrong side, when really we ought to have shown a substantial balance in our favour.
Benzol is not only essential to the motor industry, but it is absolutely indispensable to numerous other trades. Without it the vast range of synthetic colours, marketed by the German firms, could never have been attained. Had Germany embarked upon an economic instead of a military war she could have forced the whole world into abject surrender within a few months by withholding supplies of these dye-stuffs, medicinal preparations, synthetic drugs, disinfectants, and chemicals. This is borne out by the abnormal prices realized from the sale of the small quantity of dyes which were smuggled across the Atlantic to the United States of America by the commercial submarine Deutschland. One small box containing 100 lb. of sky-blue colouring realized £190 or 38s.—$950 or $9.50—a pound! Before the war the self-same dye-stuff could be purchased readily for 2s.—50 cents—a pound.
By making the plunge along industrial lines Germany could have brought our cotton, woollen, silk and other textiles, paper, paint—in short, every trade into which colourings enter—to a dead standstill within a very short time. The United States of America, France, Italy, and other countries would have been forced into a similar condition of stagnation and disaster. Germany, by virtue of her unlimited supplies of these essentials to contemporary industry, would have been in the position to have supplied the whole world—upon her own terms. Fortunately for us, a bloodless victory to secure world-wide domination did not appeal to the Teuton temperament.
The official attitude, so far as this country is concerned, towards the reclamation of the volatile liquid constituent, or waste, from coal has always been one of negation. Contrast this tendency with that obtaining in Germany, which set out to support private enterprise by installing a comprehensive plant upon Government property to win 6,000,000 gallons of benzol a year from state-owned and state-mined coal. The British official attitude is additionally remarkable when it is borne in mind that adequate supplies of this material are absolutely imperative to the maintenance of our national security, because benzol constitutes the backbone of modern high explosives.
The recovery of benzol is every whit as essential to the community of these islands as is the provision of drinking water. It may appear to be Draconic to compel the delivery of the last ounce of benzol from the coal or gas we burn, but there are many other enactments in force of a more exasperating character, and which are productive of extremely little benefit either to the individual or the community. In this particular instance no one would suffer in any way, because, while the whole trend of scientific thought is towards the thorough recovery of this valuable liquid fuel and industrial weapon, it does not hesitate to demonstrate how the desired end can be obtained without inflicting the slightest hardship upon the citizen.
The steel trade demands huge quantities of coke to conduct its operations. The carbon residue from coal is preferable to the raw mineral fuel. To meet this technical requirement special ovens have had to be evolved to turn the coal into coke. Yet for years we carried out this conversion and allowed the substance thrown off in the process to run to waste. We even continue to do this to-day. It was found that the coke could be obtained more readily and easily, as well as cheaply, by means of what is known as the bee-hive oven. This coke-producer attracted the attention of the interests concerned because it was not only cheap to install but inexpensive to maintain and renew, while it facilitated compliance with the fluctuating demands for the coke which naturally is due to the alternating periods of depression and prosperity in the steel trade. But we have no monument to waste comparable with the bee-hive oven. However, it became so firmly entrenched as to prove wellnigh resistant to progress when science came along with an improved system yielding a coke of equal quality, but which had the additional recommendation of enabling all the other products arising from distillation and which formerly were permitted to escape, to be recovered.
The virtues of the new method were conceded, but the heavier initial expenditure which it entailed was regarded as an insurmountable adverse feature, especially as the Britisher gave expression to another peculiar trait in his character—would the revenue derived from the by-products more than offset the increased costs, capital charges and maintenance expenses? One disturbing factor demanded particularly careful study. When the call for coke declines, and a certain number of the ovens have to be closed down, they cannot be brought into re-activity upon the revival in the steel trade without an overhaul.
In restoring the ovens heavy expense is incurred. The antiquated and wasteful bee-hive oven can be renovated at a trifling price, but the modern by-products recovery oven entails far heavier expense before the resumption of operations. The charge varies according to the care which has been bestowed upon its maintenance, but, if this has not been conducted along careful lines it may easily incur an expenditure ranging up to 15 per cent. of the original cost of the plant. This charge, unless defrayed out of the renewals account, must be carried to capital. In view of this circumstance the general practice has been to install the by-product system to take care of the constant load—the output of coke to the degree below which it cannot fall even in periods of extreme depression—and to utilize the obsolete bee-hive oven to take care of the fluctuations from the irreducible minimum to the maximum. This margin being extremely wide naturally, the bee-hive still holds sway, and so continues its wasteful reign unchecked.
To extend their field of activity and to provide an outlet for the products of their brains the Germans made an astute commercial move. They expressed their readiness to equip the British coking plants with their modern by-product recovery system on condition that they were to be at liberty to acquire the liquid residual—benzol. The suggestion found certain favour in British eyes. The benzol was a drug on the home market, so its shipment to Germany was regarded as the solution of a perplexing problem. In this manner Germany secured the necessary raw materials from the British scrap-heap to feed her dye industry and to pile up her reserves of high explosives against the day when the gauntlet should be thrown down. There is a tendency in certain quarters to assail the cunning competitor, but are we rather not to blame for our own extreme shortsightedness, lack of initiative, and indolence?
The coking-ovens, however, only absorb a portion of our total output of coal, the annual average of which may be set down at approximately 260,000,000 tons. Subtracting 60,000,000 tons as the export figure, we are left with a round 200,000,000 tons consumed at home. Of this figure a round 100,000,000 tons is consumed during the year in the domestic fire-grate.
We all revel in the blazing fire in our rooms during the winter, but do we reckon on the cost? The volume of heat thrown into the room is but a trifling proportion of that emitted by the glowing coal. The greater part flies up the chimney, together with all the benzol, ammonia, and other valuable constituents of the fuel. Immense volumes of soot pour forth from the chimneys to pollute the atmosphere, disfigure buildings and monuments, while the damage wrought within the rooms to fabrics, curtains and other embellishments runs into millions sterling during the year.
Could this waste be avoided? Certainly. The domestic fire-grate does not possess a single virtue. It should be scrapped forthwith. Coal, as a household fuel, should be prohibited. It should be carbonized. Coke, when burned under the most advantageous conditions, throws off as much, if not more heat, and can be induced to shed practically the whole thereof into the apartment. As the alternative to coke we might rely exclusively on gas, releasing the whole of the carbon residue, approximately 70 per cent. of which results from the distillation of every ton of coal for industry. If we presume an average of 10,000 cubic feet derivable from every ton of coal, then we find that the 100,000,000 tons burned annually in the household grates would give us 1,000,000,000,000—one billion—cubic feet of gas, the whole of which is at present being lost up the chimney. From this enormous volume of gas, each 10,000 cubic feet of which contains on the average two gallons of benzol capable of reclamation, we could, if we were sufficiently energetic and enterprising, obtain 200,000,000 gallons of benzol—twice the petrol imports for the year 1913. In comparison with what liquid fuel we could derive from our coal the actual 41,000,000 gallons secured to-day certainly appears to be trifling.
Our methods of burning coal in the home, which is appallingly wasteful, is equalled by the general folly investing our system of gas supply, which is equally improvident, simply because we prefer to cling to the obsolete order of things rather than to march with progress. Years ago, to protect gas-consumers, a standard of value was established. The gas had to comply with a certain candle-power standard. The unit thus was one of luminosity. Such a system was satisfactory in days gone by, when the practice was to use a burner and open flame of the fish-tail or bat’s-wing shape. Then some method of standardizing gas according to its luminous intensity undoubtedly was imperative.
But judgment of gas by its luminosity with an open burner is effete. It became relegated to the limbo of things that were by the discovery of Welsbach, which effected a complete and wonderful revolution in gas illumination. His invention supplied the means of securing brilliant illumination with heat. This may sound paradoxical, but is readily explained. The particles of the nitrates of the rare earths, thoria and ceria, which enter into the composition of the incandescent gas mantle, will not emit light until they have been raised to a high degree of incandescence. This can only be achieved by using the mantle in conjunction with an atmospheric, or Bunsen, burner.
This invention rendered it no longer necessary for the gas to carry the constituents which contributed to luminosity, among which was benzol. With the mantle they are superfluous: in fact are deleterious. What is required is a gas rich in the constituents contributing to heat. Coal-gas, or as it is more familiarly called, town-gas, is rich in these two essentials. They are hydrogen and methane or marsh-gas. When burned under suitable conditions they are capable of giving off intense heat, and the higher the degree of incandescence to which the rare earths entering into the composition of the mantle can be raised, the more brilliant the illumination.
Consequently the time has arrived when the standardization of gas according to luminous power should be thrown overboard in favour of one based upon calorific value. This was introduced to a certain degree as a temporary expedient during the war, but it should now be made rigid. Signs of awakening to the true state of affairs are apparent. The research committee appointed to investigate this question has recommended that gas should be sold according to its calorific value, and that all gas-consuming appliances should be adapted to the new order of things.
Should legislation be passed endorsing these recommendations it will be possible for further huge quantities of benzol to be recovered from our coal, or rather the gas derived from the volume of coal annually absorbed for gas production. It is the benzol and toluene which impart the luminous intensity to the gas, but which are unnecessary for the production of heat. At the present moment the quantity of benzol reclaimed from the coal absorbed by the gas-works is approximately 21,000,000 gallons a year—a fraction of what it might be.
We may safely assume that of the 270,000,000 tons of coal we draw from our collieries every year, at least 160,000,000 tons are capable of such treatment as will enable the volatile liquid fuel to be recovered. Upon the basis of two gallons per ton of coal this would represent 320,000,000 gallons of benzol, of which huge quantity all but 41,000,000 gallons are being lost under contemporary conditions. The value of this spirit at the moment may be set down at approximately 2s.—50 cents—per gallon. Thus we are deliberately throwing away £27,900,000—$139,500,000—a year. It is being permitted to vanish into thin air. This figure serves to bring home what the losses arising from the neglect of waste really represent, and also reveals our extraordinary lack of imagination and enterprise.
Were we to recover the whole of the benzol content of coal we should not only be able to satisfy the whole of the needs, aggregating about 150,000,000 gallons a year, of the domestic motor industry, but we should be able to meet the requirements of the other industries to which benzol is indispensable. There would be no need to grow apprehensive concerning our coal-tar dye industry and the manufacture of other products dependent upon materials derived from coal. The British dye industry is in its infancy. At the moment its benzol requirements are modest, being approximately 4,000,000 gallons a year. But it is an industry which, given full opportunity, promises to thrive and to expand amazingly, and so one may safely anticipate that its benzol needs will advance by leaps and bounds.
Moreover, one must not forget that, as yet, benzol itself is but little understood, because it has not received the attention it deserves from the chemist. If we decide to exploit our coal to the extent which prudence dictates, the wizards of the laboratory will be encouraged to embark upon further original research, and it is quite possible that they will reveal other and equally promising applications for the spirit of coal.
While domestic users have not been fully alive to the possibilities of British benzol other countries, notably France, were eager buyers of what we ourselves failed to appreciate. We need not sacrifice this export trade: rather we should be able to cultivate and to expand it to a very pronounced degree.
In view of the part which benzol played in the war one hopes that the Government will consider the situation in a more enlightened spirit. The circumstance that we might be able to retrieve a round £28,000,000—$140,000,000—a year should offer every inducement towards compulsory modernization of methods in this particular province. Benzol should be made a national issue. To compel the use of coke, instead of coal, in the household, would go a long way to relieve the coking-ovens and other distillation plants of all apprehensions of glut accumulations of coke, and would tend to steady the output of this fuel, as well as to bring about the abolition of the wickedly wasteful bee-hive oven. Our gas standardization system should be overhauled to ensure the sale of gas by its calorific rather than its luminous value. The country might even do worse than to nationalize benzol, taking over the whole of the output as a corollary to the compulsory distillation of all bituminous coal. As the alternative it might undertake to purchase what the trade could not sell, for naval purposes, inasmuch as in the Senior Service the consumption of petroleum oils has reached an impressive figure from the increasing use of oil fuel, practically the whole of which at present has to be imported.