BY J. B. HENDERSON, F.I.C. XV. 



wealth-producing business, squandered in useless and 

 often absurd methods. As an example of the results 

 which can be achieved by educated endeavour in our 

 mining methods, take one of our largest well-known Northern 

 mines. There, where everything pointed to disaster, a 

 qualified engineer, a university graduate, was appointed. 

 He reduced the costs by over 20s. per ton on an output of 

 about 20,000 tons per annum, and so turned a dismal 

 failure into a dividend paying mine. 



Lying in many places over Australia, including 

 Queensland, are huge heaps of ore residues, all waste pro- 

 ducts. They contain hundreds of thousands of pounds 

 worth of metallic values, but for the lack of a little know- 

 ledge — knowledge of a process which would economically 

 extract these values, all of that wealth at present lies 

 waste. 



From one works alone (Mt. Morgan), over 800 tons of 

 sulphuric acid per day is thrown away into the atmosphere. 

 This enormous loss is much more marked in America than 

 it is here, and the problem of its utilisation is receiving 

 close attention there. 



In our coal mining also, the great bulk of our wealth 

 of coal is wasted. First of all, with present mining 

 methods, about one-third of the coal is left in the seams, 

 and can never be recovered. Of what is extracted that 

 used in producing power by steam is mostly wasted — 

 some of the waste being inherent to the methods, much 

 of it due to unsuitable boiler construction, dirty tubes 

 and plates, and bad firing. It has been estimated that 

 of the energy actually obtained from the original coal 

 in a coal seam, less than 10 per cent is utilised by steam 

 engines. With house coal for heating and cooking, matters 

 are even worse, probably less than 1 per cent of the original 

 energy of the coal seam being utilised. 



There is one obvious method of effecting a huge saving 

 in this wasteful method of producing energy, a method 

 to which attention has been called elsewhere. It is to 

 establish a huge power station at the centre of the mining 

 district — -in our case, near Ipswich. There electrical 

 power would be generated from waste coal and from the 

 waste gases from large coking ovens. The by-products 

 : rom the distillation of the coal would also yield a return 



