Atmospheric

Part 9 - Coal and Oil

In 1709, Abraham Darby, found a way to remove impurities from coal so that he could use coke (instead of expensive charcoal made from wood) to extract oxygen from iron ore in his iron and steel furnaces. This reduced the cost of steel for the Industrial Revolution but, by burning carbon, that had been buried in the ground for millions of years, released more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

From pre-Roman times until 1712, water mills and horse-powered water pumps extracted water from the deep tin mines of southwest Britain. Then Thomas Newcomen, built the first commercially-successful, steam-engine driven pump.

But the steam age really took off in 1772, when James Watt greatly improved the efficient use of coal with separate steam condensers. 

 After Watt's patent had expired, in 1804, Richard Trevithick's locomotive hauled the world's first railway train.

In 1912, the Titanic had 29 locomotive boilers, suppling steam at a pressure of 215 pounds per square inch (1,480 kPa) to two giant, four cylinder engines and one of the world's first commercial steam turbines. Each boiler supplied more than 260 pounds (lbs) of steam per minute. 

The Titanic could carry about 6,600 tons of coal and burned between 600 and 800 tons of coal per day while operating at full speed. The coal was shovelled into the boilers by 50 firemen on each shift of four hours on and eight hours off for a total of more than 150 firemen (stokers).

 In 1846, Major Alekseev and N. Voskoboynikov dug an oil well near Baku in Russia and, in 1861, built a modern refinery that produced about 90% of the world's oil.

In 1875, David Beaty discovered a crude oil field in Pennsylvania and, by 1885, this produced 77% of the world's oil supply. However, by 1900, the Russian Branobel company in Azerbaijan, was producing more than half of global consumption.

At first, in north America, refineries extracted only kerosene from the crude oil to replace the increasingly expensive whale oil then used for lamps. There was no demand for the more volatile fractions, including naptha and gasoline, and this was often dumped into the nearest river. 

With the introduction of electric lighting, the kerosene market declined but the new internal combustion engines provided a market for gasoline and diesel fuel. The later invention of the gas turbine provided a market for aircraft jet fuel (kerosene).

The growing demand for oil products created oil booms in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, and California and U.S. crude oil production increased from 2000 barrels, in 1859, to 126 million barrels in 1906. 

 Oil largely supplanted coal for shipping by 1960, but coal continues to be used to make steel and for power generation.