Dryer Motors

Variable speed drive motors line the dryer hall at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, set in a row down the floor with red pipework running along the left wall beneath a perforated metal ceiling. Coiled cables drape over the nearest machine in the foreground. The motors controlled the rotation speed of the drying units to regulate moisture in the coal output to around 15 percent, faster rotation raising the moisture and slower rotation reducing it. The hall reads as a working line, machine after machine, the drive units stationary now.

The dryers sat between the wet section and the presses in the briquette line, part of the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria. The presses at the end of that line were supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract, for two factories rated at 2,100 tons per day. Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting because of its high alkali and sulphur content, so Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line and dried here before pressing. Brett photographed the dryer motors on 15 April 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.