Science: Coal & Fourth Kingdom

A large section of the Fifth Estate, that world company of scientists, climbed the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh last week. They knew soft coal, what it was and what could profitably be done with it and were answering the call to the Second International Conference on Bituminous Coal made by President Thomas Stockham. Baker of Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Coal Situation. Of U. S. coal companies, only the Island Creek Coal Co. admits that it is making satisfactory profits. Practically all the rest claim that they are losing money. Certainly most are. They have millions of tons of coal mined and ready .for : sale at low, unprofitable prices. But sales have fallen off. Electricity, gas and oil are supplanting coal. This economic shift is inevitable.

The way to coal profits—President Baker emphasized when he opened last week’s conference—is to teach consumers how to use coal in new ways and to teach coal men how to “unlock the riches that lie hidden” in coal (i.e., to produce synthetic goods).

C-O-H-N & Synthetics. When Carnegie Tech’s President Baker asked Director Edwin Emery Slosson of Science Service to speak at this bituminous coal conference, he did not expect Dr. Slosson “to make any serious contribution to the practical and technical problems” which engaged the attention of the Congress. So Dr. Slosson, learned journalist, made a brilliant survey of synthetic chemistry, in which soft coal is the great raw material.

Since Friedrich Woehler a hundred years ago accidentally manufactured urea, scientists have synthesized more things than exist naturally in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. Carbon is the base of most of these new products. As diamond it is the most precious natural substance, as coal the most valuable. Carbon plus oxygen gives carbon monoxide, whence grows a myriad of compounds; carbon plus hydrogen gives methane, and its myriad; carbon plus nitrogen gives cyanogen, and its myriad; C plus N plus H gives hydrocyanic acid; C plus N plus H plus O gives urea. There are 400,000 carbon derivatives. All can be made from soft coal. They constitute, in Dr. Slosson’s fine phrase, the Fourth Kingdom (after animal, vegetable, mineral).

Enriched Scientist. Georges Claude of France was the darling of the scientists and businessmen at the coal conference. His discoveries and applications of pure science have made him a rich man. Vast industries depend upon his inventions. He discovered how to dissolve acetylene in acetone; $20,000,000 worth of dissolved acetylene is sold over the world each year. He invented a way of liquefying air; the Air Reduction Co. has 30 plants using his process, is worth $25,000,000. He created neon lamps; cities and airports now glow redly, to his profit. He put waste coke oven gases under hyperpressures and low temperatures and got pure hydrogen, benzine, ethylene, nitrogen (fertilizer) compounds; vast factories run day & night in France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, but the Du Ponts’ $10,000,000 Lazote plant at Belle, W. Va., which has U. S. rights to the processes, is not yet making money.

Artificial Coal. Dr. Friedrich Bergius of Germany heated soft coal, hydrogen and a catalyst under heavy pressure. The coal changed into gasolines, aromatics and other volatile hydrocarbons. This Berginization process the German Dye Trust is using under direction of Dr. Carl Krauch, able chemist, who was at Pittsburgh last week. With him was Dr. Bergius himself to report his further wizardry with hydrocarbons. By heating cellulose and: water or lignin and water, lie produced coal. “End coal” he ; calls it, and, like natural coal he could transmute it into gasoline and other fractional products.

Brilliant and useful is Dr. Bergius’ feat. Brilliant and useful too is another U. S. method of making artificial coal. Instead of throwing away the thick refuse oil left in refinery stills, it is heated in tubes several thousand feet long. This heating produces some vaporized, oil. The residue cools into shapeless blocks of bituminous coal, which can be processed just like natural soft coal.

Rubber. This is a chemist’s way from coal to rubber: coal, coke, calcium carbide, acetone, isoprene, rubber.”This artificial rubber is still much more expensive: than vegetable rubber, nor can it yet be vulcanized.

Fuel Gas. Learning from visiting Germans that fuel gas made by the Ruhr coke ovens is being pumped to homes 450 mi. away and will eventually be piped all over Germany, their U. S. colleagues at Pittsburgh last week seriously considered doing likewise in the U. S. Making such gas at the coal mines and distributing it by long pipes should be cheaper than shipping coal to homes and factories. Also, the convenience of such gas will enable small communities to have factories, will prevent the present rural drift to cities.