The Coming of Coal

by Robert W. Bruère

But the Federal Commission's superpower plan as published is only a beginning. It is not enough merely to save the energy of coal, to relieve the congestion on the freight railroads, and to provide a common-carrier system for high-voltage electricity. There is needed also the more intensive utilization of the fuel supply. The plan of the Superpower Commission regards coal—bituminous coal especially—as nothing more than fuel. The industrial revolution was built upon the power of coal to fire the boilers in steam engines. But the use of coal for the generation of steam only is almost the least efficient way in which it can be utilized. From the point of view of national economy the better utilization of what are known as the by-product values of bituminous coal is quite as important as the establishment of an integrated power system.

For coal is much more than potential power. Bituminous coal is the source of many of our most valuable mineral products and yet today, of the more than 500,000,000 tons annually produced, almost all is used exclusively for the production of power and all of its ingredients except the heat-producing elements are wasted. About one-twelfth of the bituminous coal—that which is now used for the production of coke in ovens that recover its by-product—must be excepted from this statement. Moreover, the 90,000,000 tons of anthracite mined every year are economically used because anthracite contains practically nothing but carbon and ash and its direct burning is the most efficient way in which it can be used if its energy content is thoroughly conserved. Omitting, then, the whole of the anthracite supply, and that bituminous which is already properly utilized, we still have more than 400,000,000 tons wastefully used every year—so wastefully that not only are all its commodity values destroyed, but its primary purpose of creating heat and industrial power is imperfectly served. In the effective integration of fuel and power it will become necessary to separate the energy-producing elements in bituminous coal—and also of the sub-bituminous coal, of lignite and peat, of which we have reserves amounting to the billions of tons—from those which have only a commodity value.

In their report made for the Smithsonian Institution, Gilbert and Pogue point out that “there are in one ton of good bituminous coal, fifteen hundred pounds of smokeless fuel analogous to anthracite, ten thousand cubic feet of gas, twenty-two pounds of ammonium sulphate, two and one-half gallons of benzol, and nine gallons of tar” and that lignite gives almost as much of these commodities. Apart from the fuel values represented by the “smokeless fuel analogous to anthracite” the gas and benzol, the ammonium sulphate, and tar have unique values as fertilizers, and the source of those mineral elements from which our dyes and a large part of our modern medicines are made. The process used to extract these commodity values is similar to that which nature used in making anthracite, except that the volatile matter which the geological revolution drove off into the air is collected and utilized.

The gas created by the process can be delivered by pipe lines over practically any distance to the centers of consumption, or, with the help of the internal-combustion engine, converted into electrical energy at the mine. Gas as a fuel has the great advantage that it eliminates both storage and haulage, and produces the same amount of heat from about one-half the amount of coal, and since it can be produced as needed all the year round it will go far to eliminate the seasonal character of coal mining. Moreover, wherever heat rather than light or power is desired, gas, in the present state of technical development, is even more economical than electricity. Under the by-product system the present annual coal output can be made to more than double its service in driving machinery and in addition it can be made to contribute heavily to our supply of fertilizers, motor fuel, and chemical products. It is estimated that the aggregate loss resulting from the present wasteful utilization of coal is over ten dollars a year for each inhabitant of the United States.

The by-products of coal can play an important part in the fuel industry. Where it is thoroughly integrated they can help in financing the development of hydroelectricity to supplement the electricity produced from coal. For while the running expenses of a hydroelectric plant are little more than the interest on the capital invested, the amount of that capital is large. Also the establishment of gas plants at the mines is a costly thing. The temptation is to revamp and repair and reorganize the present outworn and wasteful system rather than make large new investments and scrap the old equipment. But in the commercial value of the by-products from bituminous coal lies the possibility of paying for the new power to turn our factory wheels by the sale of dyes and fertilizer and medicines and tar and explosives and perfumes and a hundred other things. So it is to the chemical laboratories that we look for the new values which may make a superpower system financially possible just as it is to the electrical workshop that we look for the inventions which will integrate it into one thing.

But even the recovery and sale of the by-products of coal are not all that is involved in the new way of supplying the world with power. While gas can yield the full fuel value of coal in a more efficient form than solid fuel, as well as all the commodity values, if it is converted into power through the steam engine, at least one-half of its energy value is lost. To conserve its full value, gas must be burned in the internal-combustion engine, the most familiar type of which is the one we know under the hood of the automobile and the most efficient type is the Diesel engine which has made the by-product system industrially practical.

The internal-combustion engine is a relatively simple device for transforming the energy in fuel into power directly instead of indirectly as the steam engine does, of turning wheels at first hand, of cutting out steam as a middleman. It greatly enlarges the range of fuel utilization because it can burn not only fuel gas and the lighter oils—gasoline, benzol, and their close kin—but also fuel alcohol, the supply of which though hitherto only slightly developed will last as long as the sun and rain make vegetation grow in the soil. Our future success in winning and holding an economic surplus upon which the opportunity for the good life and a world civilization depends, rests almost as largely upon the internal-combustion engine as the industrial revolution depended upon the steam engine of Newcomen and Watt.

When the internal-combustion engine has been adequately developed, and that time is near at hand, it will be economically possible to establish the great superpower stations at the mines, to integrate the electricity flowing from their gas-driven dynamos with the flow from the hydroelectric stations on the great rivers and mountain streams, and to use the surplus gas and smokeless coal to supply the domestic consumer during the period of transition from our present wasteful fuel and power system to the new system which will give us heat and power with the turn of a button on an electric switch.

In our solution of the fuel problem there must be an extension of such work as that of the Fuel Administration which integrated the administrative side of the industry as by a man in a high tower with all the resources and needs of the country spread beneath him. He must see all the sources of power as in a common reservoir—all the coal and oil and gas and water power—all the fuel alcohol and those subtle forces within the material atoms themselves which scientists dream of forcing to do the work of man. He must sort and deliver power to fill the need, this in the form of oil or gas sent through its own pipe line; this still in the bulky form of coal or coke by rail or water to those few industries which can take no substitute; and more and more of it transmuted into electricity and poured along the singing wires, or later perhaps through the pathways of the air itself, to turn the wheels of industry.

And in addition to the actual pooling of the power resources of the country, there must come their intensive and economical use—economical by more standards than that of money alone—so that the miner who blasts the coal from the face, the man who sinks the oil well or runs the internal-combustion engine or strings the electric wires, will get in return for the thousands of tons of coal he has mined or the kilowatt hours he has generated from his dynamo, the material basis of the good life.