Powdered Coal

Gaunt and grimy stokers, silhouetted in furnace glare, are no longer an integral part of a ship's bowels. Even coal burners can do without them. Last week members of the Fuel Conservation Committee of the U. S. Shipping Board sweated in the test furnace room of the Todd Dry Dock Co.; peered at an intricate machine which was busily pulverizing soft coal and blowing it into furnaces. Hitherto, on the experiment freighter Mercer, the coal has been pulverized in one machine, then distributed to three furnaces, but the latest improvement provides each furnace with its own pulverizer and does away altogether with the problem of distribution. The new pulverizer is attached to the door of any furnace. Like a large coffee mill, it grinds the coal until talcum powder would look coarse in comparison; sprays it into the greedy furnace where it becomes incandescent almost immediately.

Pulverized coal is not a recent invention. The Ford Co., the N. Y. Edison Co.. all the big new power stations are familiar with its advantages, much to the envy of ship owners. But the separate furnaces on vessels created problems of distribution and firing that made powdered coal impracticable for them. These problems have now been solved.