CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS - Coke Oven Managers Association

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SIMPLEX COKE OVENS : THEIR HISTORY ([Part 2) - EDWARDS 69Ackton HallThe Simplex ovens here superseded a battery of 50 Collin non-recoveryovens 3,57 . They were capable of carbonising 2,000 tonnes of coal per week.The bunker feeding the stamp-charger was divided into two sections so that acoke suitable for malting could be produced from the Haigh Moor seam insome of the ovens if necessary, simultaneously with the usual furnace coke inthe other ovens.UphollandThis plant was apparently another that was financed initially by theSimplex firm, remaining in its possession until 1920, when ownership passedto the colliery company 102 .Newton CapIt appears that the Simplex ovens here replaced beehive ovens that hadbeen used for more than 50 years to produce low-ash, low-sulfur foundry cokefrom the coal mined in the Newton Cap colliery, near Bishop Auckland 67 . The44 Simplex ovens were arranged as a single battery. In contrast to the earlierSimplex ovens at Clay Cross, Staveley, Ackton Hall and Chilton, which hadthree charge-holes, a separate charging tub to each hole (though of courseunused at the first three of those plants because they were stamp-charged) anda more or less central gas offtake, the Newton Cap ovens had four chargeholes,a four-hopper charging car and hence necessarily an end gas offtake (atthe pusher side), i.e. they were more modern in those respects. The surpluscoke oven gas from these regenerative ovens was used to fire the Lancashireboilers at the colliery; waste-heat ovens might therefore have been installed tojust the same effect, one feels!The reason for the apparently early demise of this plant must remain asubject for further research in local records.LambtonThe 35 Simplex ovens here supplemented an existing battery of 35 Semet-Solvay waste-heat ovens. The two batteries had separate gas treatment systemsup to the exhauster inlet, then a common system. The Simplex ovens had notaper. The comments made on this point by the Lambton coke oven manager in1918, Dr G.P. Lishman, seem wide of the mark to us today. Claiming that theintroduction of parallel chamber walls was due to ‘the Solvay people’, he went
70 THE COKE OVEN MANAGERS’ASSOCIATIONon: ‘It is said there are some expanding or salt-containing coals for whichparallel walls are unsuitable, but do not believe it. Tapered ovens are a relic ofthe days when, owing to uneven heating, ovens could not be pushed, and somebrilliant genius thought that by giving a 2-inch taper in 400 inches he wasdoing something to win the war (among coke oven contractors)! There are a lotof things like this lurking about coke ovens, some of them in very unexpectedplaces.’ It is worth noting that these ovens were still being built with an archedroof to the chamber. The surplus gas was to be supplied to a power stationabout 2 km away 66 .According to a later account 103 , these Simplex ovens had ‘two sets ofwalls’, i.e. each chamber had its own pair of heating walls, not shared with theadjacent chamber. This is the only mention of such an arrangement found bythe present writer at Simplex plants; it was of course typical of Semet-Solvayovens. From 1919 to 1938 inclusive, the Simplex battery (constructed of semisilicabrick) carbonised some 38,000 tonnes of coal per chamber, at an averagegross carbonising time of 31¼ hours, the oven charge being just over 8 tonnes.The author of that later account stated in conclusion that ‘the Simplex ovenwas probably as good as any of its day.’To replace the Simplex and Semet-Solvay ovens, Lambton had twobatteries of 30 Collin ovens built in 1935 and 1938, themselves replaced in1955 by 52 Coppée ovens for the owners since 1947, the National Coal Board.The plant was finally closed in 1985/6.TrehafodThe Simplex installation here in 1920 represented a backward step from thegeneral advancement of cokemaking technology, with its horizontal-flue,waste-heat ovens having chambers only 2.3 m high and taking only 7 tonnes ofcoal, charged through three holes from individual tubs, and with a central gasofftake 58 . The 40 ovens, in a single battery, carbonised 1500 tonnes of coal perweek, at a carbonising time of 29 hours. The waste heat was utilised by fiveLancashire boilers.The article 58 describing this plant makes no mention of any battery that itreplaced. The evidence for an earlier regenerative battery of 50 ovens (initially40, it seems) is from a Simplex advertisement already mentioned (CollieryGuardian, 26 November 1909) and the published lists of coking plants 3,45,83 .The article also fails to mention the 40 B.C.O. waste-heat ovens built duringWorld War I by British <strong>Coke</strong> <strong>Oven</strong>s Ltd (whose only other ovens were at
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CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS - Coke Oven Managers Association

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