the death of coal?

Quote: reno

No, it's progress. Yearning for the good ol' days? How about the week of December 5, 1952 when 4,000 people in London died from exposure to coal?

Not to mention that natural gas has dropped in price, due to fracking and more oil drilling, and it's also cleaner and easier to use in power plants, and industrial ovens and kilns.

hey, remember when republicans were big advocates of free markets and letting outdated business models fail? It doesn't seem that trump ago.

Quote: AZDuffman

I have heard that gasoline can be made from coal. Why the Saudi Arabia of coal never did more of that I never understood. Could be that it is too complex to make it worth it. With fracking, we should be OK for a generation at this point.

Patents go back over a hundred years. In 1949, a demonstration plant for converting coal to gasoline was built and operated by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Louisiana, Missouri.

Quote: Pacomartin

Patents go back over a hundred years. In 1949, a demonstration plant for converting coal to gasoline was built and operated by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Louisiana, Missouri.

Coal oil was produced in the mid 1800's with the intent of replacing whale oil in lamps. It proved too volatile though and was quickly replaced by the development of kerosene and the discovery of oil in the US. The too volatile property of coal oil probably could have been further refined for a motor fuel if the internal combustion engine was prevalent then.

Quote: Pacomartin

Patents go back over a hundred years. In 1949, a demonstration plant for converting coal to gasoline was built and operated by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Louisiana, Missouri.

I heard the Nazis were really working it. And India.

Quote: kenarman

It proved too volatile though and was quickly replaced by the development of kerosene and the discovery of oil in the US.

The original Rockefeller made his billions
on kerosene, not gasoline. He was retired
by the time gas took off with the popularity
of cars. Imagine being the richest man in
the world by selling fuel for lamps. That
was the last quarter of the 19th century.

That's well within living memory. Both my
wife's parents were raised on farms in
the 20's and 30's that had no electric, they
bought kerosene by the 55 gallon barrel.

Quote: Evenbob

The original Rockefeller made his billions
on kerosene, not gasoline. He was retired
by the time gas took off with the popularity
of cars. Imagine being the richest man in
the world by selling fuel for lamps. That
was the last quarter of the 19th century.

That's well within living memory. Both my
wife's parents were raised on farms in
the 20's and 30's that had no electric, they
bought kerosene by the 55 gallon barrel.

Both my parents were raised on farms on the Canadian prairies at that same time. My mother used to talk about one her daily chores was to fill the lamps, clean the chimney and trim the wick everyday.

Quote: kenarman

Both my parents were raised on farms on the Canadian prairies at that same time. My mother used to talk about one her daily chores was to fill the lamps, clean the chimney and trim the wick everyday.

In Victorian and Edwardian times, there was
a male servant in the mansions of the rich
whose sole job was clocks and lamps. He kept
the scores of lamps filled and operating and
the dozens of clocks wound and serviced. One
room, like the parlor, could have half a dozen
clocks in it. There was also a servant who did
nothing except see to the dozens of fireplaces.
These people were the first ones up and the
last to bed, working 15 hours a day 7 days a
week, with Sunday afternoon off.

Imagine how electric changed all of it overnight,
and central heat got rid of fireplace heat.

Nothing like a good windmill fire, to make me laugh at the wind industry.

Say what you will about Trump, but under his leadership 2018 is set to surpass the record for closure of coal-fired power plants. Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin have all closed coal plants this year. At least 44 units in 22 plants for a total of 15.4 GW will close this year.

The record under Obama (2015) was only 14.7 GW. Sad!

Quote: reno

Say what you will about Trump, but under his leadership ...

I doubt if presidents Trump or Obama can really claim much leadership about coal fired plants closing. It is pretty much an economic reality.

1. While the U.S. coal-fired power fleet still had about 246GW of capacity operating in July of this year, retirements already announced will cut that capacity by 15 percent through 2024.
2. Cost is the biggest force in the decline of coal, as renewables and gas-fired generation are proving cheaper and more flexible.
3. The electric-generating industry is well into a fundamental transition that is gaining momentum and will probably accelerate as technology disruptions occur, most notably around advances in energy storage.
4. While the country’s coal infrastructure is aging and inflexible, renewable generated electricity, by comparison, continues to become increasingly cheaper to produce and gas-fired generation is proving more suitable to grid modernization as utilities embrace integrated distributed resources and system modernization.
5. The future of coal-fired generation assets in the U.S. is limited, with no new plants being built and a majority of existing plants 40 years old or older