[Gasification] [Stoves] formation of coal in carboniferous era

[Doug]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:21:08 +0530
Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Dr Karve,

Thank you for this interesting comment, as I come from a family of coal
merchants. I also had to learn all about coals and biomass fuel during
my training as a Boilermaker, even though they were being junked
(1950's)in favour of oil and gas fuels. It's ironic that knowledge is
often more valuable to you at the wrong end of your life, and wished at
times I had paid more attention to lectures. 

>I claim that the organisms that decompose
> lignin had not evolved at that time and therefore the lignocellulosic
> debris just piled up everywhere, just as discarded plastic does today.
> I need a time machine to verify this.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve

As we can only theorize about that distant time, my own interest in
coal formation has indicated that our World today no longer has the
violent tectonic plate movements and volcanic disturbances. These of
course would account for how these swamps full of peat ended up at huge
depths in the hottest zones to then form the better quality hard coals.
As time passed and displacement saw the lands lift out of the water,
biomass lost the cycle of becoming coal, leaving the huge fields of
brown soft coal lignites.

Here in New Zealand, we have several areas where you can see the seams
of coal formed from forests blown down and cooked by the volcanic
incandescent pyro-plasmic gas clouds that accompany these events.
Without the pressure of depth, they are formed in sandstone and in the
upper levels still remain to be seen as torrified wood, dated to have
formed around 45-50,000 years ago. On my last visit to that area (2012), I
used the saw on my Swiss Army knife and cut a piece out, and the
attached photos shows a few details of how the wood was left torrified.
Logs are still harvested from the swamps in some places of the same age
but not charred, which are very valued for furniture making.

Hope this is of interest.
Doug Williams,
Fluidyne Gasification.

 


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