Coal Pokers

The natural gas supplies of the U. S. are rapidly approaching exhaustion and the known oil pools are estimated to hold only a six-year reserve against the present demand. But there are deposited in the U. S. over one and a half trillion tons of bituminous coal, a little more than half of the whole world's fields.* It is tempting, hoarded energy which industry has been demanding, more and more insistently, be transmuted into forms other than heat.

It was to answer this insistency that industrial chemists met at Pittsburgh last week.

Coal-Oil. When Dr. Friedrich Bergius of Heidelberg, Germany, runs a ton of soft coal, or even lignite, through heated chambers and squirts hydrogen gas at the oozing tar that runs from the coal, he gets 140 gallons of heavy oil. About one-third of this consists of aromatic hydrocarbons, suitable for "no knock" motor fuel. The rest is gas oil, lubricating oil, fuel oil.

Pulverized Coal acts exactly as a liquid, if heated moderately, said President Walter E. Trent of the Trent Process Co., Manhattan. The heat raises tiny bubbles on the coal dust and the lubricated particles then roll so that the stream can be piped an appreciable distance like water.

Wood Alcohol. Ages ago coal was, of course, living wood, and now, like wood, it is being converted into methyl (wood) alcohol. General Georges Patart of France makes this alcohol by heating soft coal until carbon monoxide and hydrogen result. To these gases he adds oxygen to form an organic product. Then, with this synthetic compound on hand he can create formaldehyde (essential for the synthetic resins like Bakelite) or the more complicated alcohols (as isobutyl and amyl, useful in making varnishes).

Synthol. Professor Franz Fischer of Mulheim-Ruhr takes this same wood alcohol and builds up a petroleum-like fuel.

Fertilizers. "When we want, we shall make food from coal or wood," confidently said Dr. Louis C. Jones of the Nitrogen Engineering Corp., Manhattan. Four-fifths of the world's production of artificial fertilizers are made with the aid of coal, not by water power as is commonly supposed.

Coal Balls. At the Carbocite Co., Canton, Ohio (Clarence B. Wisner, representative), pulverized coal is heated and the hot, dry dust squeezed into rough fuel balls. The process uses run-of-mine and low grade coals.

Heat. Gas made from coal produces more heat, for its money, than does electricity. Even in communities where electrical heat has been introduced, there has been no apparent lessening of coal-gas demand, these pokers into the possibilities of coal declared.

*The bituminous deposits in the U. S. can supply the world's need of motor fuel for 800 years, according to Dr. Gustav Egloff, technical director Universal Oil Products Co., Chicago.