Abstract
THE Coal Measures of Great Britain, for all the depression in the coal industry, are still a great national asset. The article on "Oil from Coal" on p. 812 of this issue brings up once again the question of their proper utilization. It is common knowledge that it is technically possible to produce motor-spirit from coal: the difficulty is to find a reasonably satisfactory method. It appears, however, that we are now reaching a stage when it is legitimate to regard our seams of coal in the light of a series of oil-bearing deposits, since 'crudeable' products can now readily be produced from them. If the estimates of production costs given by Mr. Strevens and Mr. Cross are correct, and the coal-oil distillation process is the cheapest available, then, on the basis of this process, the Coal Measures of Great Britain are comparable with good medium-grade oil sands or shales. The economically workable oil deposits of the world yield crude petroleums giving from 20 to 70 per cent of motor-spirit ; the crude distillates produced from British coals by coal-oil distillation give 35—45 per cent or more ; thus they fall in the middle of the range, on a par, for example, with Southern California ojl stock. We should also recollect two further points. First, the hazards of extracting coal from the coal measures are, in general, considerably less than those of extracting petroleum from oil deposits. These latter hazards may be visualized by recalling that nearly a third of the million or so oil wells drilled in the TJ.S.A. are stated to be dead or abandoned. Secondly, the world's total reserves of motor-spirit to be extracted from coal are considerably larger than those to be extracted from petroleum.
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Coal and Smokeless Fuel. Nature 141, 821–822 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141821c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141821c0