Coal Returns

It happened in the early 1950s, it happened again in the mid-70s, and it is happening again now. Energy supply and demand (and costs) go way out of balance, and the country heads off on a new round of coal technology. I was very involved the last time around, doing research on chemicals and clean fuels and learning enough coal chemistry and technology to make life very interesting. The USDOE funding for projects declined when oil prices fell in the 80s, but several good projects have continued. I had a lot of fun with coal chemistry at SGI in the 90s.

There is good and bad news with coal, of course. The good news is the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with billions of tons in the Appalachian, Midwestern, and the Rocky Mountain states. Even Texas has coal. The bad news is that it costs a lot to burn coal cleanly. Progress toward controlling these costs has been made, and some of these clean technologies may be useful this time.

It may sound trite to say that coal is different from oil, but the differences go well beyond the obvious solid vs. liquid. For one thing, coal contains much more oxygen in its structure than oil, giving additional handles for doing chemistry that about make up for the need to deal with a solid. For another, coal composition and chemistry vary widely with geography, allowing the user to pick the properties needed to do a given job.