MINING: Cost-Cutting in Coal

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The high cost of transporting coal is one reason coal has lost ground to other fuels. While the price of coal at the mine $4.85 a ton; has dropped over the past eight years, the average cost per ton to ship it to market rose from $1.47 in 1948 to $3.24 in 1955, and is still going up. Last week Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Co., biggest U.S. independent producer, demonstrated a radical new way to cut shipping costs. On an experimental basis, it sent the first coal through a 108-mile, $15 million pipeline designed to carry 1,300,000 tons of coal annually from Pitt Consol's strip mine at Georgetown, Ohio to the big Eastlake steam electric plant of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. The coal is pulverized and mixed with water to form a slurry, which six giant pumps move along at about 3½ m.p.h. At Cleveland, a $2,500,000 plant dries the coal so that it can be blown into the furnaces.

The cost of transporting the coal plus full repayment of the investment in 15 years, is expected to be about half the $3.32 a ton it now costs to ship coal to Cleveland by rail. Although the pipe is a possible competitor of the railroads, three of them—the Pennsylvania, New York Central and Nickel Plate—allowed the pipeline to cross their right of ways in return for an option to buy 45% of the pipeline-operating company's stock. If the pipeline proves trouble-free when full-scale operation starts April 7, the industry expects it to be widely copied and the market for coal expanded.