Science in the coal industry

The activities of the coal industry extend over a wide field. There are many varied aspects of work underground, and on the surface there is the chemical engineering task of preparing the coal for use and distributing it. This wide range of activities brings with it correspondingly a wide field for the application of scientific methods. The problems are also the more diverse because of the variety of coals and the complicated geological stuctures of the coalfields. In this paper I deal primarily with that aspect of science in the industry which is concerned with research, but to show this in its proper perspective I must refer briefly to the other scientific fields. The scientific services We have found it convenient to group these under the broad titles ‘scientific control’ and ‘research’. Scientific control comprises in the first place a scientific service in each of the nine Divisions to deal with the day-to-day work and problems of a local nature as they arise. The first responsibility of this daily service is to provide the routine test data required by law in order to secure safety against explosions. It comprises the regular testing of the roadway dusts and the mine air. Wherever diesel locomotives are used regular tests of the exhaust gases are called for. In more recent years, in an effort to combat pneumokoniosis, the sampling and measurement of the airborne dust is carried out to an increasing extent. The sampling and analysis of the various grades of coal marketed from the 1000 collieries is now a routine and comprises a wide range of tests on many thousands of commercial sorts of coal. Other routine services common to a large engineering industry have also been developed. On this occasion I am not going to describe these activities in more detail except to say that there is now at least one good laboratory and sometimes more than one in each of the forty-nine Areas, and in most Divisions a Divisional laboratory to deal with the more specialized problems. There is also a laboratory at each of the fifty coke-oven plants belonging to the industry.