Abstract: A larry car (3) for transporting a charge of pre-heated coal along the top of a battery of coke ovens, from a storage installation including a group of metering bins (1) at one or more filling stations above the battery, to a corresponding group of charge holes for the oven chamber to be charged, the car including a corresponding group of coal transfer hoppers (4) each having valved inlet and discharge apertures (5,21), a sealed connection (2) between each metering bin and transfer hopper, an inert gas reservoir (10) connectable via a valved manifold (13,14) to each transfer hopper, a valved connection (7,8,9) for charging the reservoir, and a valved connection (15,16,17) to permit dusty gas to be displaced into the storage bunkers, and control means for the various valved connections to maintain continuous isolation of the interior of each transfer hopper from the atmosphere, to permit dust-laden gases to escape into the storage installation, and to cause inert medium to displace coal discharged from the tra

Abstract: A method of operating a conveying and storage system associated with a coal pre-heating installation, supplying pre-heated coal to a coking oven battery, the system including a series of conveyors (16, 17, 19, 20) for carrying coal from the pre-heating installation (10, 11) into a plurality of storage hoppers (21) and metering bins (22), a plurality of interconnecting pipes (29, 30, 31, 46, 47) ensuring maintained flow of gases through the system, there being an inert gas generator (26) for introducing inert gas into the series of conveyors, the method including the step of discharging a mixture of inert and combustible gases from the system into a gas collecting main (24) of the coking oven battery (23) to which pre-heated coal is supplied from the metering bins (22).