March 9, 1917.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

481

56 cast iron, paddles, set at uniformly varying angles,
and pitched to give a forward movement to the coal-oil
mixture or dux. The coal is delivered at one end from
the dryer by means of a belt, and the oil at 250degs.
Bahr, is carried in by a pipe from the feeder tank, as
previously mentioned. The mixture is kept hot, and
the consistency of the mass is improved by the injection
of live steam at intervals. The point of mixture of the.
oil and the dust requires close supervision, and a man
is in constant attendance.

The hot flux, thus mixed with a fair degree of
thoroughness by the paddle mixer, with a small addition
of moisture due to steam injection, is dropped into the
edge runner. This machine is in effect a Chilean mill
with huge heavy rollers, between which are specially
constructed scrapers peculiarly adapted to their purpose.
The edge runner at Lansford weighs 95,0001b. The
rollers each weigh 25,0001b. Here, for a period, the
plastic flux is thoroughly ground and stirred. The effect
is a complete intermingling of the coal and the oil,
which increases to a marked degree the cohesion of the
final product, and makes the breakage loss in the
briquettes far less than that of anthracite coal. It is
desirable that the edge runner should be operated so
wet that a little excess water is pressed out of the flux.
After the edge runner treatment, the flux passes into a
small fyreaking-up device, which reduces any caking that
may have resulted from the heavy pressure employed.
From here the flux is transferred by a conveyor to the
/ pressroom.

Stress should be laid upon the fact that ease of opera-
tion throughout the stages of mixing depends entirely
upon care in adjustment and proportion throughout.
For instance, too much oil results (in “ sticking ” in the
paddle mixer and the edge runner, while too meagre an
oil addition results in a fragile briquette. Set rules are
not possible, as the problem is an individual one, but a
few trials soon determine the course to pursue. The
oil percentage at Lansford is 5 to 6 per cent, of the
briquette.

The flux, arriving at the pressroom, is discharged
from the belt conveyor into a pocket elevator, from which
it goes to an additional auxiliary fluxer—a, preliminary
treatment to passing through the briquetting press.
This fluxer—in effect a vertical paddle mixer—is of the
utmost importance. Here the material gets a final
effective intermixing. Here, too, screenings from the
press and bins are returned for re-treatment. Aside
from this, this fluxer is important as an aid in properly
feeding the press. -

B

By Pass Chute'

60 Mesh
Screen-.

"12 Screw Conveyor

Return Chute
for oversize

A • 40 Mesh Screen 0 ■ 60 Mesh Separator

B- 20	■’	"	P-40	”

C- !0	-	-	F- 20	-

G /0	-

Separator Building	Dryer Building

Fig. 3.—Separator and Dryer Buildings.

Pressing.

The press crew, who control this fluxer, keep it well
filled at all times, so as to maintain an unvarying supply
of flux for the press. Furthermore, this machine, by
the use of superheated steam, enables the operator to
feed his flux to the press at about 135 to 145 degs. Fahr.,
the proper temperature for the Belgian press in use at
Lansford. Also, at this point, a final addition of
moisture can be made, by steam injection, if the flux is
too dry.

From here a screw conveyor carries the material to the
press feed device. This feeding apparatus consists of a
pair of arms revolving horizontally, whereby a constant
flow from the conveyor into the press is maintained.
Proper feeding apparatus, to ensure constancy of
delivery, is of prime importance, and is one of the
points too often neglected.

The flux now passes to the press. This machine is
of the Belgian type—being in effect a modification of
the well-known spring rolls. The flux passes between
the two rolls, which are provided at present with steel
tyres. It is proposed to replace these with chilled cast
iron. The egg-like shape of the briquette is secured by
machining out the necessary semi-shape in the roll tyre,
the moulds being placed so as to secure the maximum
number for the dimensions given. Especial care is
taken that the opposite moulds shall meet accurately
during the rotation of the press. The rolls are 39 in. in
diameter, and 3 ft. wide. The clearance, when running
free, is infinitesimal, but the flux forces a slightly wider,
margin. The pressure secured varies from 3,500 to
5,0001b. per sq. in. The peripheral speed is between 55
and 60 ft. per minute. The presses were manufactured
by the Vulcan Iron "Works, of "Wilkes-Barre, Penn-
svlvania.

Finishing.

From between the rolls the hot briquettes fall down
a. chute below the press, and are picked up by a con-
veyor leading to the bins. A considerable portion of
the flux now appears on the briquettes as joints or
“fins”; consequently, a final rounding or shaping is

necessary. The conveyor discharges the product into a
revolving screen over the bin. The agitation received
in the screen removes the wiaste and incidentally gives
some opportunity for cooling. The briquettes drop into
the bin, where they fall on a stationary screen; thence
they are passed over a grizzly and into the railroad cars.
The waste from the rotary screen, the stationary screen,
and the grizzly is conveyed back to the auxiliary fluxer,
to repeat the process from that point.

The briquette thus manufactured is now recognised as
satisfactory for domestic purposes. The short-lived
light smoke occasioned by the presence of oil is but
slightly odorous, and not an annoyance. On the other
hand, the handling loss is extremely small, the heat
content "is higher than in anthracite, and the burning
quality excellent. The absence of clinker formation
during combustion is noticeable, and the cost of main-
tenance is well below the acceptable market price.

THE MINING ENGINEER ON THE
GERMAN GENERAL STAFF.*

By F. W. Gray.

The “Great General Staff” of the German Army
would appear to be a body admirably calculated to carry
out the purposes for which it was designed, namely, to
place every item of general knowledge at the disposal of
the chiefs of the German Army for use in war. As the
General Staff is a distinct and separate organisation,
having its own buildings and appropriations, it is untram-
melled by red tape or changes of Ministry, and its men-
bers are able to pursue their investigations and researches
secretly and effectively.

To mining men, who naturally look at things from
their own particular standpoint, the hand of the mining
engineer is plainly discernible in the German campaign,
and in the manner in which the German armies at the
beginning of the war headed directly and without hesi-
tation for certain predetermined objectives. There was
nothing haphazard about the German invasions of
neutral and enemy territory. They did not sing : “ We
don’t know where we’re going, but we’re on the way.”
They knew very explicitly where they were going. That
they did not always get there is another story. Two
important raw materials, coal and iron, bulked largely
in the reasons which decided the German General Staff
to break the Decalogue of Moses and the accepted usages
of nations by invading Belgium. The Germans seem

to have appreciated better than any other nation the
major part that would be played in this war by high
explosives, and they appreciated the importance of coal
in providing the source of high explosives sooner and
more fully than any other people. It is an interesting
reflection to-day that a great part of the explosives used
in mining coal in Great Britain, and more particularly
in Scotland, came from Germany. They were good,
and, what more particularly appealed to the soul of the
Scotch coal owners, they were cheap. It must, of
course, be admitted that the Germans were pioneers in
the manufacture of what are now known as permissible
explosives. The extraction of benzol from coal gases is
something that has been developed on this side of, the
Atlantic since August 1914, but in Germany they were
recovering benzol from coke oven gases 30 years ago.

The Germans desired to obtain the coal fields of
Belgium and Northern France, and the iron ore areas
of French Lorraine. By doing so they saw they would
achieve a number of desirable objects. They would
deprive France of her main coal field and her chief iron
ore supply.’ They would gain for Germany the use of
the excellently equipped collieries of Belgium and
Northern France, adjoining incidentally some of the
finest armament works, both for the manufacture of
heavy ordnance and light arms, in the world. Further,
they would erect a breastwork against the invasion by
the French armies of the all-important industrial dis-
trict around Essen and Dusseldorf. The first fighting
of the war was,at Liege, followed by the fighting around
Mons and Charleroi—all colliery centres. It was at
Mons that our soldiers found that colliery buildings,
railway bridges, canal embankments, and similar erec-
tions were bad places near which to take cover, as the
Germans had the ranges from their excellent maps.

The principal coal field of Belgium and Northern
France is the basin of Hainault, the continuation into
France forming the Valenciennes field. The Germans
obtained control of this basin in its entirety. .They also

* Canadian Mining Institute Bulletin.

gained possession of the more newly discovered field to
the north of Liege, known as the Belgian Campine, a
district to which the German mining periodicals made
frequent reference, it being a continuation of the "West-
phalian fields. It was discovered and proved by deep
borings, based on geological reasoning such as led to the
discovery of the concealed coal field of Kent and the
concealed extension of the Midlands coal field in
England. The Belgian coal output the year before the
war was 22,500,000 tons, and the'Germans have obtained
entire possession of the collieries from which this output
came.

The French output in 1913 was 40,000,000 tons. A
great portion of this came from the Valenciennes field,
but exactly how much the writer has not been able to
find out. In the “ Coal Resources of the "World,” M.
Defline writes : “ Among the number of coal basins
known in France, that of Valenciennes may be con-
sidered as the most important, not only because of its
actual production, but because of the importance of the
coal reserves that it contains.’\

Between Verdun and Longwy, in what is known as
the Briey Valley, are situated some of the most valu-
able iron ore deposits of Europe. By occupying this
district, and by her successful invasion of Belgium and
the district around Valenciennes, Lens, and Cambrai,
Germany seized at one stroke the better part of the
French coal and iron supply. It has been shrewdly
suggested that the Germans did not intend so much to
take Paris as to obtain the coal fields mentioned, and,
truly,.these coal fields have been of more real value than
Paris itself. A French Senator—•Senator Hanatoux, we
believe—has stated the possession of the Briey Valley
iron deposits has enabled Germany to lengthen the war
very greatly, and he intimates that the extraordinary
violence of the German assaults on Verdun were inspired
more by a desire to lessen the French menace of Metz,
and the danger of re-occupation by the French of the
territory between Verdun and Metz, rather than by any
political value attached to the capture of the magnifi-
cently defended fortress of Verdun.

Important coal and iron deposits are -found near Lodz,
in Russian Poland, now occupied by the Germans. The
other coal fields of Russia are too far removed from the
furthest extension of the German front in Russia to be
menaced at any time, and, under present conditions,
there seems no reason to fear for Russia. It is not
generally realised that Russia has large and valuable
deposits of anthracite—practically the only anthracite in
Europe, with the notable exception of the Welsh fields.
Southern Russia has great possibilities as a coal and iron
country.

Germany’s invasion of Russian Poland was dictated,
like her invasion of Belgium, largely from a desire to
bastion the coal fields of Silesia, which were seriously
threatened when the Russians were nearing Cracow
earlier in the war. When the German statesmen speak
of the necessity to enlarge the boundaries of the empire,
so as to remove the menace of foreign invasion, and
permit of the peaceful industrial development of the
German Empire, they mean that Germany desires to
keep the coal fields of Belgium, of Northern France, the
iron ore of Lorraine, and they wish to see the industrial
centres of Westphalia and Silesia so far within the
frontiers, that a future war will not see any disturbance
of the peaceful processes of making trinitrotoluol and
Krupp guns.

A consideration of the facts here referred to will show
that the mining engineer has played no mean part in
the decisions of German strategy. It might not be a
bad idea to put a mining engineer at Ottawa, and let
him suggest that a reduction in the bituminous coal
output of Canada of between 14 and 2 million tons this
year is not a means of winning the war that would occur
to our enemies, if their record during this war is any
indication.

Reference has been made above to the “ Coal
Resources of the World.” It has been mentioned
before, but it is none the less significant, that not one
single map of Germany was contained in the atlas that
accompanied that monumental compilation of the year
1913. Descriptions of the German coal fields are to be
found in the work, written in German however, and
therefore unlikely to be popular, but no maps. Did the
German fear the disclosure of their railway gridirons
along the frontiers of Belgium and Luxemburg, and
that extraordinary railway belt, with short feeders
stopping at the Russian frontier, that decorated the map
of East Prussia? Did the German General Staff have
its mining engineer among the delegates to the Inter-
national Geological Congress at Toronto in 1913?

Coal Mines Control.—The Board of Trade announces that
in the Department of the Controller of Coal Mines an
Advisory Board representative of the coal owners and the
miners in the various districts has been attached to the
Controller. It consists of the following :—For the coal
owners : Mr. Adam Nimmo, Mr. Arthur Pease, Mr. C. E.
Rhodes, Sir Thos. Ratcliffe-Ellis, and Mr. Bramwell. For
the miners: Mr. Robert Smillie, Mr. W. Straker, Mr.
Herbert Smith, Mr. Stephen Walsh, M.P., and Mr. Vernon
Hartshorn. The Controller will also be assisted in the
financial administration by a Board of Financial Advisers,
consisting of Mr. A. H. Gibson, F.C.A. (president of the
Institute of Chartered Accountants), Sir Woodburn Kirby,
F.C.A., and Mr. A. Lowes Dickinson, F.C.A. Sir Richard
Redmayne, K.C.B., H.M. Chief Inspector of Mines, will
assist the Controller in matters relating to the production
of coal, and Mr. S. H. Hunt, of the London and North-
Western Railway, in those relating to distribution. Mr.
H. F. Carlill, of the Board of Trade, is acting as secretary
to the Department. As regards the machinery, of control,
it is proposed for the present to preserve the various general
and local committees which have been set up from time to
time to deal with the production and distribution of coal.