Where does coal come from?
Is coal a fossil fuel?
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Is coal and oil the same?
Explanation: Coal is a solid, oil is a liquid and natural gas is a vapor (gas). Coal and oil form from deposits of animal and vegetable matter deep in the ground at conditions of high pressure over many years.
How does crude oil become coal?
The oil and gas then migrates through the pores in the rocks to eventually collect in reservoirs. Coal comes mainly from dead plants which have been buried and compacted beneath sediments. Most coal originated as peat in ancient swamps created many millions of years ago.
Why is oil not coal?
Oil resources are not as extensively distributed worldwide as coal, but oil has crucial advantages. Fuels produced from oil are nearly ideal for transportation. They are energy-dense, averaging twice the energy content of coal, by weight.
Is coal older than oil?
The three fossil fuels – coal, petroleum, and natural gas were formed in a similar way by heat and pressure, but petroleum and natural gas were formed from plants and animals that lived in oceans and are millions of years older than coal. This caused them to become a liquid (petroleum) or a gas (natural gas).
Will oil ever run out?
That being said, at current consumption, we have by some accounts an estimated 47 years of oil left to be extracted. That equates to somewhere in the region of 1.65 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves. Other sources up this estimate a bit, but most agree we have around 50 years left, give or take.
How much oil is left in the earth?
World Oil Reserves The world has proven reserves equivalent to 46.6 times its annual consumption levels. This means it has about 47 years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).
How long will oil last in the world?
It is predicted that we will run out of fossil fuels in this century. Oil can last up to 50 years, natural gas up to 53 years, and coal up to 114 years. Yet, renewable energy is not popular enough, so emptying our reserves can speed up.
What happens when oil runs out?
So, if your car runs out of oil, the engine won't function properly. In this instance, you need to replace your oil — or risk severe engine damage. The oil change light in your car warns you if your vehicle's oil level is running low. However, if you wait too long to change your car's oil, your engine will fail.
What year will we stop using oil?
Their new report suggests a faster timeline than many governments are planning: an oil and gas production phase-out by 2034 for rich countries, and by 2050 for the poorest.
Where did all the oil in the earth come from?
Dead critters, plenty of pressure, a lot of heat, and hundreds of thousands of years in time. Crude oil is formed from the remains of dead organisms (diatoms) such as algae and zooplankton that existed millions of years ago in a marine environment. These organisms were the dominant forms of life on earth at the time.
How is coal created?
Coal takes millions of years to form Coal contains the energy stored by plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago in swampy forests. Layers of dirt and rock covered the plants over millions of years. The resulting pressure and heat turned the plants into the substance we call coal.
How old is oil in the ground?
Most natural gas and oil formation dates back between 10 (Cenozoic) and 180 (Mesozoic) million years ago. Only 10% of oil deposits are Paleozoic (more than 200 million years ago).
How is coal formed?
Coal takes millions of years to form Coal contains the energy stored by plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago in swampy forests. Layers of dirt and rock covered the plants over millions of years. The resulting pressure and heat turned the plants into the substance we call coal.
What is the process of formation of coal?
The formation of coal occurs over millions of years via a process known as carbonation. In this process, dead vegetation is converted into carbon-rich coal under very high temperature and pressure.
What is the biological origin of coal?
It is generally accepted that most coals formed from plants that grew in and adjacent to swamps in warm, humid regions. Material derived from these plants accumulated in low-lying areas that remained wet most of the time and was converted to peat through the activity of microorganisms.
Is coal found deeper than oil?
Fossil fuels are found underground, trapped in deposits surrounded by layers of rock. Coal beds typically lie 200 to 300 feet below the surface. Oil and natural gas deposits are typically a mile or two down, and the deepest oil and gas wells have reached more than six miles below the surface.
Coal vs Oil formation? | Physics Forums
Coal, as an example, starts out with generations of higher order plants dying one on top of another. You may have heard of peat bogs - the organic matter accumulating over 100's of years in a wet environment where microorganisms can do some decomposition.
What are the Differences between how oil and coal is formed ... - Answers
Oil is formed primarily from the decaying bodies of billions of tiny marine organisms. Coal is formed primarily from dead plant remains in swampy areas. The main differences are the organic source ...
What are the main differences between coal and oil? - Quora
Answer (1 of 6): Coal: * Coal forms in swampy areas as the result of the decay of plants in the absence of oxygen. Biochemical changes produced by bacteria release oxygen and hydrogen and concentrate carbon. Coal goes through several changes during formation. With increased pressure and time, i...
What is coal oil?
Coal oil. Coal oil is a shale oil obtained from the destructive distillation of cannel coal, mineral wax, or bituminous shale, once used widely for illumination. Chemically similar to the more refined, petroleum -derived kerosene, it consists mainly of several hydrocarbons of the alkane series, with 10 to 16 carbon atoms in each molecule, ...
Where was coal oil first produced?
Coal oil that burned cleanly enough to compete with whale oil as an indoor illuminant was first produced in 1850 on the Union Canal in Scotland by James Young, who patented the process. Production thrived in Scotland, making Young a very wealthy man. In Addiewell, West Lothian, Young built a substantial industrial complex for separating petroleum ...
How many carbon atoms are in kerosene?
Chemically similar to the more refined, petroleum -derived kerosene, it consists mainly of several hydrocarbons of the alkane series, with 10 to 16 carbon atoms in each molecule, with a boiling point of 175 °C to 325 °C (347 °F to 617 °F), higher than gasoline or the petroleum ethers, and lower than the oils. ...
What is the cautionary tale of whale oil?
The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 2019-10-06. Retrieved 2019-10-07. This pioneering form of fossil fuel, which some called coal oil, burned cleaner and brighter than whale oil, and didn’t have a pungent odour.
Where was the Young refinery in Scotland?
In Addiewell, West Lothian, Young built a substantial industrial complex for separating petroleum from various oil shales, including cannel coal. In its time it was one of the largest chemical works in Scotland. Construction began in 1866. Addiewell remained the centre of operations for Young's Paraffin Light and Mineral Oil Co. Ltd., but as local supplies of bituminous shale became exhausted, activities were increasingly focussed on other shale-fields. The refinery closed around 1921.
When did coal oil stop being used in the US?
But by that time, US coal oil distillers were switching over to refining cheaper petroleum, after the discovery of abundant petroleum in western Pennsylvania in 1859 , and oil from coal operations ceased in the US.
Is coal oil a cure all?
Coal oil was once used as an internal and topical home remedy as a general cure-all for many ailments, including coughs, flu, cuts, abrasions, and wounds. Internal applications were administered by adding the toxic petroleum product to sugar cubes, molasses, honey or some other substance to mask the taste, while topical applications were applied by adding it to bandages or by pouring the coal oil directly on the affected area.
What changes the sediment around coal?
You’ll generally find that as time, heat, and pressure change the organic materials, they also change the rest of the sediment around the coal. Peat occurs in sediments that are not yet hard enough to be called rock, lignite in soft sedimentary rocks, bituminous in harder ones, and anthracite in metamorphic rocks.
What happens when oil and gas rise through rock?
If oil and gas are rising through spaces in rock, their motion may be blocked by another shale layer. Especially if the shale has been bent by movements in the Earth associated with mountain-building, so that the oil and gas rise into a “trap”, the fossil fuels may sit there for a long time (see the figure below).
What is it called when you remove coal from the ground?
Removing the rocks on top of the coal, called “surface mining” or “strip mining”, requires putting those rocks on top of something else, breaking the coal loose with machines or explosives, hauling the coal away to be burned, and then either putting the rocks back on top or just leaving them.
How do oil and gas get trapped in sandstone?
Gas and oil become trapped in the spaces in a sandstone layer if an impermeable shale layer lies above the sandstone along the “top” of a fold in the rocks. Source: Penn State University, R.B. Alley, GEOSC 010, Geology of the National Parks. Exploration for Oil and Gas. Unconventional Oil.
How does oil and gas move?
After oil and gas have escaped from the shale into sandstone or other rocks with bigger spaces, the oil and gas can move through those spaces. Most sediments are deposited under water, or the spaces in them fill up with water later. Natural gas is gaseous (no surprise there!), oil is liquid and floats on water, and so both tend to move upward through the water-filled spaces. The great majority of oil and gas eventually reach the Earth’s surface as oil or gas seeps. Before the industrial revolution, the amount of fossil fuel being formed, and the amount leaking out of seeps, were probably very similar (we’ll give some numbers soon).
What happens when oil breaks down?
With too much heat, the oil breaks down to make methane. This gas is also produced as coal forms. Coal, as a solid, mostly sits where it was formed. Eventually, if the rocks above it are eroded so that it is exposed at the Earth’s surface, the coal itself may be eroded away, and either “eaten” by bacteria, or buried in new rocks. ...
What happens when you heat mud rocks?
Environmental Protection Agency. . When mud rocks (shale layers) are heated, the buried dead plants break down into the smaller molecules that make up oil and gas. Initially, these are trapped in the shale.
Where do oil leaks come from?
These “leaks” to the surface are very frequent, and as they may come either from mother rock, or from reservoirs that loose some oil (see below), they have been widely used as possible signs of oilfields when the history of oil began. These leaks from reservoirs sometimes bear the name of “dismigration”.
How does oil get out of a reservoir?
Getting this oil is pretty easy : it requires that a tube is forced into the reservoir, and then part of the oil spontaneously gets out under the pressure of the associated gas , and part of the rest can be “pumped” with various techniques that keep sophisticating. With this “conventional” oil, the extraction requires, on average, a couple % of the energy that is enclosed in the oil obtained.
How to get minable oil?
In order to get a minable oil deposit, it is necessary that the liquid hydrocarbons “concentrate” somewhere before they get to the surface, which practically requires that they be stopped during their migration by a “trap”. Such a trap is another watertight layer that generally forms some kind of “circumflex accent” above the porous layer when the oil circulates. It can be a layer of salt, of argile, etc. Because of their respective density, the water expelled from the mother rock accumulates below the oil, and gas above. At this stage, the reservoir si said to be of “conventional” oil. The rock that holds the oil is called a reservoir.
What is the most complex and heavier molecule in oil?
This “normal” oil also contains, in variable proportions (15 % on average), more complex and heavier molecules including oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur, called resins. All oil has been formed from living organisms (algae, plankton, sometimes continental vegetation…) that lived a very long time ago.
Is oil still in the tectonics?
But the history of our oil is not over ! Indeed, the oil reservoir is still taken in the tectonics, and therefore also inexorably sinks deeper and deeper, and gets heated more and more. As a result, the oil will undergo a second pyrolisis, which is a little the equivalent of a distillation in a refinery.
Is hydrocarbon production a long term consequence of sedimentation?
The production of hydrocarbons is therefore a normal long term consequence of sedimentation as soon as there is an organic fraction in the initial mixture, but without a process allowing to “concentrate” the very diffuse gas and oil resulting from this decay, there would not be a single oilfield or gasfield in the world.
Why are fossil fuels so powerful?
So why are fossil fuels such a powerful, but ultimately problematic, source of energy? Conditions on the waterways of today's Louisiana help us understand how fossil fuels are made and why they're ultimately unsustainable. Oil, coal and natural gas are made from things, mostly plants, that lived and died long ago. It's taken hundreds of millions of years for nature to create enough of the special conditions that save the carbon and energy in plants to form the fossil fuels that we use.
What is the energy released by a fire called?
Fires do this, too. Depending on whether it happens in a fox or a fire, you may see this energy release called respiration, or burning, or oxidation, or combustion, or perhaps other words, but all serve to combine oxygen with plant material to release carbon dioxide, water and energy.
Why do plants burn?
Short version: Growing plants use the sun’s energy and simple chemicals to make more plants, and animals “burn” the plants to get that stored energy from the sun. Almost everything that grows is burned, but in special cases some plants are buried without oxygen, escaping burning. Time and heat turn these buried plants into fossil fuels.
What plants give rise to natural gas?
Vary what goes into Earth's pressure cooker, and the temperature, and you end up with the different kinds of fossil fuel. Woody plants make coal. Slimy plants, algae, will give you oil, and both of 'em give rise to natural gas.
Do fires release CO2?
And that releases the CO2 and H2O. Fires also do this, but they don't do it in quite so controlled a manner.
How are crude oil, coal and gas formed?
Google 1: Crude oil, coal and gas are fossil fuels . They were formed over millions of years, from the remains of dead organisms: coal was formed from dead trees and other plant material. crude oil and gas were formed from dead marine organisms.
What is liquid coal?
Liquid coal is the result of coal liquefaction – the process of converting Coal to Liquid fuel (CTL). According to the World Coal Association, two different conversion processes exist:
How long ago did fossil fuels start?
Google 2: Fossil fuels developed billions of years ago, when dead organic matter became buried at the bottom of the sea and altered as a result of anaerobic digestion. Oil deposits in the North Sea are around 150 million years old, while much of Britain's coal began to form over 300 million years ago.
How does coal form in swamps?
Coal forms in swampy areas as the result of the decay of plants in the absence of oxygen. Biochemical changes produced by bacteria release oxygen and hydrogen and concentrate carbon. Coal goes through several changes during formation. With increased pressure and time, impurities and moisture are removed. In swamps where coal forms, other sediment, such as sand, clay, and silt, also is deposited. The weight of the sediment compresses the underlying organic matter. During this process, moisture and other materials are squeezed out, leaving a high carbon concentration.
Where are petroleum and natural gas found?
Petroleum, or crude oil, and natural gas are important hydrocarbons that are found in nature within pores and fractures of rocks. Oil and gas form over millions of years as the result of the decay of marine organisms. These organisms die and collect on the ocean floor. Sediments such as clay and mud are deposited above these organisms. During burial and compaction, the organic matter becomes heated. Hydrocarbons are formed and are forced out of the source rock into permeable beds such as sandstone.
Can coal be used as a piece of cake?
Sure it can! Just ask the coal companies, and they will tell you that doing it is a “piece of cake”.
Is coal a fossil fuel?
Coal has long been known as a fossil fuel, a source of energy in the production of electricity, steel and cement industries. Coal can also be converted into a liquid fuel like diesel or gasoline through several different processes.
Where does petroleum come from?
A minority of scientists say otherwise, but most geologists think that the petroleum we pump from the ground (and later refine into gasoline and other fuels) comes predominantly from the fossils of marine life, such as algae and plankton.
What is the theory of petroleum?
The generally accepted theory for the origin of petroleum a geologic processing of the dead remains of ancient ocean life. (Image credit: DOE) Editor's Note: This occasional series of articles looks at the vital things in our lives and the chemistry they are made of. Oil, the lifeblood of U.S.
What happens when organic remains are entombed in rock?
However, deep drilling expeditions in the past few decades have discovered bacteria living thousands of feet below the surface, at the same depths where petroleum is forming.
What are the two types of hydrocarbons?
Hydrocarbons are typically long chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms. The smaller hydrocarbon molecules (such as methane, propane and butane) are found in natural gas. The larger hydrocarbons (such as hexane and octane) make up petroleum.
Why did shock create petroleum?
Shock's team plans to create petroleum in the lab to see if there is any aspect of the process that might support bacteria.
How does sunlight convert carbon dioxide into sugar?
Plants and certain bacteria use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into sugar. This stored chemical energy is passed along the food chain, and a few "crumbs" wind up getting buried underground. Once there, this organic material is transformed by heat and pressure into a complex mixture called kerogen.
Does oil always last?
Even when oil does form, it does not always last. Some of it migrates up to the surface, where oil-eating microbes consume the better parts of it (creating so-called tar sands ). To prevent this from happening, there needs to be a geologic formation that can trap the petroleum in a reservoir.
Where is oil formed?
And in places like the Salt Lake in Utah and the Black Sea, oil continues to be formed today. In the Gulf of California, near the Colorado River delta, researchers pulled up a mud sample and found it laced with petroleum — a sure indication that, somewhere down below, oil is now being formed.
Why does natural gas burn cleaner than crude oil?
Fuels derived from natural gas burn more cleanly than those derived from crude oil because they don’t contain components like nitrogen, sulfur, or carbon arranged in rings, which are notorious air pollutants. The only thing that can’t be produced from natural gas is asphalt, which is the heavy residue left at the end of the crude-oil refining process.
What are fossil fuels made of?
Fossil fuels — the hydrocarbons known as peat, coal, oil, and natural gas — are formed from the constituents of deeply buried and preserved organic matter. They make good fuels because the energy stored in the bonds between carbon and hydrogen is abundant and easy to release in combustion with oxygen. Some hydrocarbons are simpler than others. Coal, for example, is mostly carbon, while petroleum — which includes oil and natural gas — is mostly carbon and hydrogen. Still, crude oil is anything but simple. It’s made up of carbon molecules of many different sizes. The lightest— — with the shortest carbon chains — make good motor fuels because they are easily vaporized in engines. The heaviest hydrocarbons form viscous oil, paraffin, and asphalt. But even the longer carbon chains can be broken up chemically — in a process called cracking — to create fuels made of lighter molecules. Here are some better known hydrocarbons found in crude oil:
How much oil will the Hibernia platform recover?
The platform, called the Hibernia, is expected to recover 615 million barrels of oil over 15 to 20 years. That’s not much compared with, say, the 200 billion barrels that Saudi Arabia holds in its oil fields. But it’s a good example of how oil companies are branching out and squeezing oil from improbable places.
How much oil will be used in 2020?
Barring a worldwide recession, the U.S. Energy Information Administration believes the world will be consuming around 110 million barrels a day by the year 2020. And it looks as though we won’t be running short by then either. “It’s hard for people who remember the seventies to accept this, but I believe we’ll never ‘run out’ of oil the way the pessimists used to think,” says Michael Lynch, a political scientist at MIT.
How many barrels of oil did the Gulf of Mexico produce?
Unmanned submarines make the descent, fitted with robotic arms that guide the drill into the seafloor. The Gulf of Mexico could produce a total of 15 billion barrels, the coast of Brazil 30 billion, and the coast of Angola and elsewhere along West Africa another 30 billion — totaling some 75 billion barrels.
What can't be produced from natural gas?
The only thing that can’t be produced from natural gas is asphalt, which is the heavy residue left at the end of the crude-oil refining process. When and if supplies of natural gas begin to run out, the oil companies will focus on squeezing usable fuels out of even more difficult prospects.
Where does coal come from?
Coal usually forms from buried tissues of higher plants. Most of Earth’s coal originated as trees, ferns, and other tropical forest plants that lived in a warmer time in our history. That’s why the world’s coal beds are found on land. Oil mostly originated as very simple organisms – such as bacteria, algae and plankton.
Is coal a fossil fuel?
Both coal and oil are fossil fuels. That means they’re formed from organic matter – stuff that was alive on Earth millions of years ago – that was covered by heavy layers of rock. Over time, the increased pressures and heat resulting from the overlying rock transformed the decomposed matter to coal or oil. Both coal and oil are carbon-based fuels – ...
