THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN

AND

JOURNAL . OF. THE COAL AND IRON TRADES.

Vol. CIX.

FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1915.

No. 2842;

Institution of Mining Engineers.

LONDON MEETING.

The 62nd general meeting • of the Institution of
Mining, Engineers was held . in London on Thursday,
June 10, and Friday, June 11, the first day being
devoted, as usual, to the reading and discussion of
papers, and the second to a visit to the Coventry
colliery sinkings at Keresley, by the kind invitation of
the Warwickshire Coal Company.

At the general meeting on Thursday, which took
place, as in former years, at the rooms of the Geological
Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, the chair was
taken, in the unavoidable absence of the President (the
Duke of Northumberland) by the Acting-President
(Mr. H. C. Peake, Walsall), and there wa^.a very fair
attendance of members. Those present were :—Sir
Arthur Markham, Bart., M.P., Sir William Garforth,
Dr. J. S. Haldane (Oxford), Prof. J. Cadman, Prof.
F. W. Hardwick, Prof. Henry Louis (Newcastle-on -
Tyne), Prof. L. T. O’Shea, Messieurs Gillieaux,
Grandry, and Schlugleit (members of the Association of
Engineers, Liege), Messrs. J. Ashworth (Manchester),
A. J. B. Atkinson (Newcastle, Staffs), T. W. Austin
(Dover), T. H. Bailey (Birmingham), T. Blandford,
E. 0. F. Brown (London), J. W. Cable, A. Carter,
W. H. Chambers (Conisboro’, Rotherham), G. M.
Cockin (Rugeley), A. Cordner (Newcastle-on-Tyne), F.
Coulson (Durham), B. Dodd (Durham), R. W. Dron
(Glasgow), H. St. John Durnford (Doncaster), J. W.
Fryar (Eastwood, Notts), J. Gilchrist (Glasgow), G.
Graham„ (Sale), F. A. Grayston (Tamworth), W. G.
Griffith (Aberystwyth), R. Guthrie (Newcastle-on-Tyne),
S. Hare (Bishop Auckland), W. Harker, A. M; Hedley
(Eston, Yorkshire), W. H. Hepplewhite, R. Holiday
(Featherstone, Pontefract), H. Johnstone (Birming-
ham), G. L. Kerr (Glasgow), C. C. Leach (Seghill),
P. W. Lewis (Derby), W. Maurice (Sheffield), S. Mavor
(Glasgow’), M. H. Mills (Dover), J. D. Paton (Man-
chester), R. S. C. Peake (London), W. H. Phillips
(Rajputana), E. H. Robertson (Calcutta), A. F.
Schmidt (Manchester), J. Simpson (Monkseaton,
Northumberland), S. A. Smith (Manchester), J. B.
Sneddon (Mid-Calder), Rene Thiry (pondon), W.
Walker (London), T. F. Winmill (Bentley, Doncaster),
E. S. Wood (Murton, County Durham), and Percy
Strzelecki (secretary).

The Chairman, after expressing regret that his Grace
the Duke of Northumberland was unable to be present
to take the chair, announced that the council had that
day unanimously confirmed the recommendation of the
medal committee to award the medal of the council for
this year to Dr. Haldane. The presentation would take
place at the annual general meeting at Leeds in
September. Dr. Haldane occupied a position of great
eminence in the scientific world, and had devoted a very
large amount of his time to the service of mining engi-
neers, and with very great advantage, especially in
regard to the researches in connection with gases found
in coal mines. When, a few weeks ago, the Germans
began using poisonous gases, Dr. Haldane was over
almost the next day to provide an antidote for them,
which, he believed, he had successfully done. At the
annual general meeting there would probably be quite
the full number of papers. The royal charter, which
had been under the consideration of the council, ^nd
which they had been working for very hard, had been
received; and at the present time they were a. chartered
institution. He would especially mention the services
of Sir William Garforth in that connection.. The date
of the charter' was February 9. The grant of the
charter put the institution in a far better, position than
it had ever occupied before, and placed it more on terms
with other similar large institution s - in London.

They had had a great number of their members at the
front, the7exact figure being 242 to date. . Of those,
there were records of nine having been-killed, besides

the very large number wounded. With reference to the
great outcry which was being made at the present. time
against the coal owners, with whom mining engineers
were to a large extent allied, as to the prices and the
supply of coal, if all the men employed in collieries who
had not joined the'Army would attend their w’ork every
day, and do their utmost in the way of output — of
course, receiving the full value of their work for their
own benefit—he felt sure that the prices of fuel would
automatically fall to a considerable extent, to the benefit
of everybody, including even the colliery owner himself.
Few,jexcept those engaged in the raising of coal, knew
the extent to which costs were kept down by a full
output. At the present time, in that respect, the differ-
ence would be much greater than usual. His principal
reason for mentioning the matter was his desire to urge
everybody not only to do all they could, and to earn all
they could, but to save all they could. He was old
enough to remember the time previous to and subse-
quent to the Franco-Prussian War; there was never so
much misery in some of the colliery districts as there
was during the first five or six years after the war, and
the depression continued for about 15 years.. After the
boom caused by the present war was over, it was quite
possible — and, he was afraid, probable — that there
would be . a very serious depression in the trade. In
that connection, he might say that sometimes Govern-
ment-interference had raised prices. In conclusion, he
reiterated his advice that everyone should do his very
best now to provide for the bad time which would
apparently come.

American Coal Dust Experiments.

Prof. O’Shea then read an abstract of the first paper,
“ American Coal Dust Investigations,” by George S.
Rice, Chief Mining Engineer to the United States
Bureau of Mines (see Colliery Guardian, June 11, 1915,
p. 1222).

Sir William Garforth (temporarily in the chair
during the absence of Mr. Peake) moved a vote of thanks
to Mr. George Rice for his valuable and interesting
contribution to the Transactions. He explained that
the paper was intended for the International Congress.
When Mr. Rice heard that that was not taking place,
for reasons which were well known, he kindly consented
to have it includ.ed in the Transactions. The paper was
written after the author had had an opportunity of
seeing experiments carried out in other places, viz., in
England, France, and Belgium, and therefore he was
able to give a summary of very valuable opinions.

The vote of thanks was carried by acclamation.

Sir William Garforth then called upon Prof. Louis
to open the discussion.	,	.

Prof. Henry Louis (Newcastle-on-Tyne) said he had
hoped that Sir .William Garforth would have favoured
them with his views on the paper, because no one was
better qualified to do so than he. The paper was so
valuable and important that it could not possibly be
discussed adequately at short notice. One point which
struck _ him most in reading it through, and that on
which he hoped for some enlightenment, was what the
author spoke of as retonation waves. He did not
remember seeing much said on that subject before, and
he. hoped that Sir William Garforth would mention at
a later stage if he had had any experience with regard
to them. He was especially struck by the author’s
statement that .an explosion starting at the face was
able to produce movements of heavy bodies,.like coal
tubs, in opposite directions. In the investigation .of
colliery accidents in the past.it had been quite a usual
thing., if evidence of strong violence inbye and outbye
in opposite directions' were found,' to assume that the
source of. the .explosion lay between those two points,
that was to say, that’the explosion started between those

two points. The author’s experiments showed that that
was not necessarily true, and that an explosion: might
start at the face and; nevertheless produce these extra-
ordinary effects at a considerable distance from the
point of origin of the explosion.

Dr. J. S. Haldane, F.R.S. (Oxford), said there
were so many points in this paper that he ’would not
be able to refer to more than one or two of them. The
most remarkable thing was that it should be necessary
to have 60 ’per cent, of shale dust to render Pittsburg
coal dust inexplosive. That was a higher percentage of
shale dust than was found to be necessary in the
Eskmeals experiments. It seemed to him very important
that that percentage should be tested with a number of
different kinds of coal. He believed that the Eskmeals
experiments were nearly all conducted with Silkstone
dust, and there might, of course, be something worse
than Silkstone. He understood that Silkstone was taken
as being one of the most dangerous dusts, so far as was
known, but there might be other kinds in this country
which'were still more dangerous, as apparently the
Pittsburg dust was. Another point which puzzled him
very much was the result with gas, and, in fact, he did
not know what to make of it. Apparently, with a
mixture of stone dust and Pittsburg dust, which was
just not explosive, the explosive limit was raised very ,
considerably by the addition of quite a small proportion
of gas—1 or 2 per cent.—whereas the Eskmeals experi-
ments had given very distinctly and definitely the oppo-
site result; they had shown that the addition of a small
proportion of gas made practically no difference to the
explosive limits. It was possible, of course, but he
did not think probable^ that the difference was due to
‘ the fact that in the American experiments they were
using, not pit gas, but what was called natural gas, and
that that natural gas' had different properties from pit
gas, as it was known in this country, which was nearly
pure methane, whereas the natural gas. used in the
American experiments apparently contained-a consider-,
able proportion of ethane, and possibly other gases. In
the Eskmeals experiments, when they used lighting gas
instead of pit gas, they got quite a different result from
that obtained with real pit gas. Lighting gas’ differed
more from ordinary pit gas than the American natural
gas, is it was called, differed from ordinary pit gas. All he
had seen and all that he knew made him pretty confident
lihat the 50 per cent, limit which, was considered by the
Eskmeals Committee to be a safe limit, was a safe limit
in this country, at any rate; but more experiments were
needed. There was one point in regard to those experi-
ments, as compared with conditions in actual pits, which
was perhaps apt to be left out of account, viz., the
coarseness of the pit dust relatively to the tremendously
fine dust used in the American experiments. So far as
he knew, one never got in any pit, or in any situation,
such fine dust as that. Along the working face, for'
instance, one might have. a dust , which contained
perhaps 3 or 5 per cent, of really fine dust, which.would
pass through a 200-mesh sieve, and the rest was.coarse
stuff which might be mixed to a large extent also with
stone dust. Even on a haulage road one never got such
fine dust as was used in the American experiments.
The fact was that, a great deal more information was
wanted about a great many other points. They wanted
to .get that information from Eskmeals, because it was
evident it must be got with regard to our own country,
since the conditions here differed considerably from
those,-obtaining in America. He therefore trusted that
the experiments at Eskmeals would be prosecuted
vigorously once more as soon as it was possible for them
to be initiated. There were endless points which those
practically engaged in the prevention of explosions
wanted knowledge upon. One knew.practically nothing
about the conditions of the face, and the risks of the
face. They ought to know when a face was -safe and
when it was not safe, whereas just now, for-want of
further experimental data, one could only conjecture.
If what he had said resulted in nothing more, he hoped
it would stimulate those responsible to get the Eskmeals