Fuel Research

Abstract

THE rising cost of coal will help to focus attention upon all such potential relief work as that of the Fuel Research Board, which has now issued its 1918–19 report over the signature of its director, Sir George Beilby. The report is of a comprehensive character, and gives evidence both of care in preparation and of a desire and competence to grapple in a scientific and effective manner with some of the more important problems with which the country is faced. The Board is not only undertaking experimental work at a station established for the purpose at East Greenwich, and conveniently placed near a works of the South Metropolitan Gas Co., but is also concerning itself with inquiries conducted elsewhere into the thermal efficiency of open fires and cooking ranges, the economic position of pulverised coal, the cutting, winning, and utilisation of peat, and the sources of raw material for the production of power alcohol. The report also includes a reasoned account of the proceedings of the Board in the matter of the new gas standards which had been wisely referred to it by the Board of Trade and on which it has made recommendations. A survey of the national coal resources from the physical and chemical points of view is promised, this work having been taken over from the Coal Conservation Committee, which recognised the importance of such a survey, but, being without a staff, did not feel able to carry it out.