News on Screen

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 11th Year

Issue

Issue No.

2

Date Released

Oct 1957

Stories in this Issue:

• 1. SHOW PLACE
• 2. CONCRETE RESULTS
• 3. WEEK-END OFF

Story

Story No. within this Issue

2 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: how the cement industry uses coal, and the coal industry uses cement
NCB Commentary - Around the coal fields new shapes are rising into the sky.
These are the concrete headstocks of some of the pits of the future.
Cement is the raw material for their construction.
Above and below ground the Coal Industry uses a great deal of it.
The Cement Industry, in order to make its product, uses a great deal of coal.
Here at Shoreham, on the south downs of Sussex, is one of the country’s biggest modern cement plants.
One of the two prime ingredients in making cement is chalk.
At this 180 ft. deep quarry shot-firers prepare to blast down another section of chalk cliff. Here comes 20 thousand tons.
New electric power shovels can move in to load the broken chalk into mechanical dumpers, each holding 12 to 13 tons.
The dumpers carry the chalk to the crusher house where, at the rate of 300 tons an hour, it’s reduced to fine dimensions.
After grinding to reduce its size, the chalk meets the second basic raw material - clay.
Chalk and clay together mix into a slurry which is kept in continuous agitation until it’s fed into the kilns.
Here the mixture of chalk and clay is heated at over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Into these huge tubes, 350 feet long, the chalk and clay slurry is fed at one end.
Temperature control is critical. At the other end and pulverised coal is blasted in with compressed air and ignited.
Here is cement in the making, moving down the inclined kilns.
After the heating process, the hot clinker is cooled in these drums before it can move on to the next process.
This is grinding. In the grinding mills, each loaded with 76 tons of steel balls, cement clinker is reduced to fine powder.
Finally, the product is bagged on automatic machines, which weigh out the correct amount into each sack, at the rate of 120 tons an hour.
From now on hundredweight bags of cement flow out on an automatic circuit.
One ton of coal will produce 4 tons of cement clinker.
The British Cement Industry uses over 3 million tons of coal a year in order to achieve its rising output of 12 million tons of cement.
Straight on to rail wagons or road lorries the bags are fed from the conveyors.
Coal comes in. Cement goes out.
Another example of one major industry’s dependence on another.

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded 9th September 1957.

Keywords

Industry and manufacture; Mining; Fuels

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
Film User   Vol.12 No.137 March 1958, p118.
The National Archives COAL 32   /12 Scripts for Mining Review, 1956-1960

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Sponsor

National Coal Board