Hammer Mills 2

Hammer mills 7 and 8 occupy this wide span of the processing floor at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, their angled metal chutes descending from the upper structure toward the concrete below. A 'Cr. Crusher' sign is stencilled on a vertical beam near the right, and a large caged fan sits beside a low pile of dark coarse material on the floor. These mills reduced coal to roughly 50mm to 100mm pieces before transfer to the power station bunkers, possibly for further pulverising at that stage. Yellow-painted railings and stairs cross the space at multiple levels, with daylight coming through the window bays along the wall.

The mills and crushers on this floor fed the briquetting assemblage that the Victorian Heritage Register names the only remaining intact set of mid twentieth century briquetting machinery in Victoria. The briquetting presses downstream 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. Because Morwell brown coal carried high alkali and sulphur content and was unsuitable for briquetting, Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed the factories. The flow ran continuously through the multi-level factories until the 2014 closure. Brett photographed the hammer mills on 15 April 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.