ON iUEL ECONOMY. 195 



APPENDICES. 



The Work of the Sub-Corn niittees. 



The following memoranda concerning the work of each of the five 

 Sub-Committees will sufficiently indicate the various matters which ai-e 

 at present chiefly under consideration, and the arrangements which 

 have been made for their future investigation. 



A. 



Chemical and Statistical Sub-Committee.'— Dv. J. T. Dunn (Chair- 

 man), Professor P. P. Bedson, Dr. W. Galloway, Professor Thos. 

 Gray, Mr. T. Y. Greener, Professor L. T. O'Shea, Sir Eiciiard 

 Eedmayne, Dr. A. Strahan, and Dr. E. V. Wheeler. 



The Sub-Committee is preparing a memorandum and a biblio- 

 graphy upon the question of the chemistry of coal, and is of the opinion 

 that the time has now arrived for a re-investigation of the subject in 

 order to clear up a number of outstanding points connected with the 

 chemical constituents of coal, their mutual relations in the raw material, 

 and their influence upon the character of the various products obtain- 

 able by its distillation or oxidation. Accordingly, some of its members 

 have undertaken experimental work, partly on new lines and partly by 

 way of check repetition, with the object of providing a basis for a more 

 complete attack upon the subject in the near future. A group of 

 research assistants is already working on the problem under Professor 

 Bone's direction in the Department of Chemical Technology of the 

 Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. 



As an important part of the work, the Sub-Committee hopes later 

 on to organise systematic investigations upon the chemical character of 

 the principal British coal seams. Such an undertaking would, how- 

 ever, involve considerable labour and expense, and the prospect of 

 achieving any useful result will depend entirely on the amount of funds 

 which may be forthcoming in support. The Sub-Committee is of the 

 opinion that the resources both of existing laboratories which have been 

 established within recent years in this country for the special investiga- 

 tion of fuel problems, and of other laboratories where the technique of 

 the subject has been developed, might be utilised more than they are 

 at present in this connection, and that the time is ripe for the organisa- 

 tion of a scheme of systematic co-operative research, aided by national 

 funds, in which all such laboratories may participate. 



The Sub-Committee is also compiling statistical information relative 

 to the different purposes for which coal is used, and has entered into 

 communication with the Board of Trade upon the question, but the 

 collection and analysis of such statistics has been greatly impeded by 

 the war. 



Another important matter into which the Sub-Committee proposes 

 to inquire is the amount of wastage due to coal which, for one reason 

 or another, is at present left behind in the pits. Part of such wastage, 



' The Chairman and Secretary of the General Committee are ex officio members 

 of each Sub-Committee. 



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