The Economic Aspect of Geology

by C. K. Leith

Grasses, trees, and other plants growing in swamps and bogs decay and form a vegetable mold in the nature of peat. A peat bog from the top downward consists of (1) living plants, (2) dead plants, and (3) a dense brownish-black mass, of decayed and condensed vegetable material, in which the vegetable structure is more or less indistinct. Peat consists chiefly of fixed carbon and volatile matter, also of sulphur, moisture, and ash. The volatile matter consists mainly of various combinations of hydrogen and carbon, called hydrocarbons; it goes off in gas or smoke when the peat is heated to a red heat. The fixed carbon is the carbon left after the volatile matter has been driven off. The ash represents the more incombustible mineral matter, usually of the nature of clay or slate. The moisture in peat may be as high as 90 per cent.

The essential condition for thick accumulation of peat seems to be abundance of moisture, which favors luxuriant growth and protects the plant remains from complete oxidation or decay. Without moisture the vegetable material would completely oxidize, leaving practically no residue, as it does in dry climates. For the formation of thick peat beds, there seems to be implied some sort of a balance between the slow building up of organic accumulations and the settling of the area to keep it near the elevation of the water table. Present day bog deposits are known in some cases to have a thickness of forty feet. This thickness is not enough to account for some of the great coal seams within the earth; but there seems to be no escape from the conclusion that the same sort of deposits, formed on a larger scale in the past, were the first step in the formation of the coal seams. Flat, swampy coastal plains are believed to furnish the best conditions for thick accumulation of peat. There is good evidence that most of the deposits accumulate essentially in place, without appreciable transportation.

In time these surface accumulations of vegetable material may subside and be buried under clay, sand, or other rock materials. The processes of condensation begun in the peat bog are then carried further. They result in the second stage of coal formation, that of lignite or brown coal. This is brown, woody in texture, and has a brown streak. It has a higher percentage of fixed carbon, and less volatile matter and water, than peat.

Continuation of the processes of induration produces subbituminous coal, or black lignite, which is usually black and sometimes has a fairly bright luster. It is sometimes distinguished from bituminous coal, where weathered or dried, by the manner in which it checks irregularly or splits parallel to the bedding,—the characteristic feature of bituminous coal being columnar fracture.

The next stage in coal formation is bituminous coal. It has greater density than the lignites or subbituminous coals, is black, more brittle, and breaks with a cubical or conchoidal fracture. It is higher in fixed carbon, lower in volatile matter and water. A variety of bituminous coal, called cannel coal, is characterized by an unusually high percentage of volatile matter, which causes it to ignite easily. This material has a dull luster and a conchoidal fracture. It is composed almost entirely of the spores and spore cases, which are resinous or waxy products, of such plants as lived in the parent coal swamp.

There are gradations from bituminous coal into anthracite coal. Semibituminous and semianthracite are names used to some extent for these intermediate varieties. The final stage of coal formation is anthracite,—hard, brittle, black, with high luster and conchoidal fracture. It has a higher percentage of fixed carbon and correspondingly less of the volatile constituents, than any of the other coals.

The coals form a completely graded series from peat to the hard anthracite. Comparison of the compositions of the coal materials at different stages shows clearly what has happened. Moisture has diminished, certain volatile hydrocarbons have been eliminated as gases, and oxygen has decreased. On the other hand, the residual fixed carbon, sulphur, and usually ash, have remained in higher percentage. This change in composition is graphically represented in Figure 6.

During this process volume has been progressively reduced and density increased. Five feet of wood or plant may produce about one foot of bituminous coal, or six-tenths of a foot of anthracite.

The exact physical conditions in the earth which determine the progressive changes in coals, above outlined, cannot be fully specified. Time is one of the factors—the longer the time, the greater the opportunity for accomplishing these results. Another factor is undoubtedly pressure, due to the weight of overlying sediments, or to earth movements. In peat condensational changes of this nature are accomplished artificially by the pressure of briquetting machines. Another factor is believed to be the heat developed by earth movements and vulcanism, which presumably facilitates the elimination of volatile materials, and thus accelerates the gradational changes above described. This is suggested by the fact that in places where hot volcanic lavas have gone through coal beds they have locally produced coals of anthracitic and coke-like varieties. In general, however, it has not been possible to determine the degree to which heat has been responsible for the changes. Coals which have been developed in different localities, under what seem to be much the same heat conditions, may show quite different degrees of progress toward the anthracite stage. Another factor that has been suggested as possibly contributing to the change, is the degree of permeability of the rocks overlying the coal to the volatile materials which escape from the coal during its refinement. It is argued that in areas of folding or of brittle rock where the cover is cracked, volatile gases have a better chance to escape, and that the change toward anthracite is likely to advance further here than elsewhere.

Bacterial action is an important factor in the earlier stages, in the partial decay of vegetable matter to form peat; accumulation of waste products from this action, however, appears to inhibit further bacterial activity.