Coal Research Establishment, Stoke Orchard - Jan 08

The Coal Research Establishment was founded in the 1950's by the NCB's reseach director Jacob Bronowski the noted mathamatician. The Research facilitys were involved in projects to research new by products that could be made from coal as well as reducing the emmisons from burning coal and improving the calorific value of coal buring technologies. They were involved in projects to tun coal into useable gases which could be burned in gas fuled powerstations, as well as a project to develop a coal based alternative to petrol. Other projects we foud evidence for today were improved air injectors and exaust manifolds for foundry ovens which captured the exaust gasses and re inroduced them to the oven as fuel. Investigating new uses for slag and ash produced at coalburning powerstations. we also found reports for a project to combine the coal produced in different colleries to produce the best energy releasing blend for powerstations. One of the highlights for me was racks of shelves ina store labeled with the names major collierys at privetisation like Annesley-Bentick, kellingley, Ellington, Markham Main and Deep Navigation these shelves once held the test samples sent from every colliery to take part in the blending tests.

More details and pic on my website www.forlornbritain.co.uk

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Experimental Houses even the garages had a coal fire, but no sign of the coal powered Ford Toreno in the garage.
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Experimental Harley and Sugden Sectional Boiler
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Power Station Test Rig
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Theres a hell of a lot left. Did this close in the 90's like the rest of the industry?

As Ernie said.... wow!! Tis almost untouched (bar rust)

It closed some time after the privateisation (slaughter) of the coal industry in the early 90's, a very short sited move as they were involved in researching gas to liquid fuels just like on the recent shell advert, and other technologies which are only being heavily researched comercially now. If there work had continued and been sucessful we could have had a 10 year jump and maybe ended up not so dependent on russian gas supplies. Theres more history of the site and what it was involved in, on my website that i cant remmember of the top of my head