"Upon the Road of Anthracite"

I was recently watching A Room with a View, the 1985 Ivory-Merchant film dramatization of E. M. Forster’s Edwardian-period novel. The stellar cast includes Helen Bonham-Carter, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and others recognizable from the last 30 or more years of British film. Skipping a plot synopsis and getting right to the point, in one short scene Maggie Smith's character is traveling by train in England. In her compartment, she is sitting by the window, which is open. At one point, she uses her handkerchief to dab something out of her eye. The man sitting opposite her politely volunteers to close her window. 

Her little move to wipe her eye, and the implication that particulates are coming in the window, was a realistic aspect of train travel in the era of coal-powered steam engines. Steam engines were especially sooty. Using anthracite coal, rather than bituminous, however, reduced the particulates. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W), serving New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and which owned anthracite mines in Pennsylvania, used this advantage of anthracite combustion in an early twentieth-century ad campaign promoting its clean ride. It was the first ad campaign using a "fictional character based on a live model" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_Snow_(character)). Phoebe Snow was always dressed in white and could disembark the train at her destination as pristine as when she boarded. 

Postcard, by Anthracite Museum Press, Scranton, PA, showing a 1910 DL&W Phoebe Snow advertisement.

Coal rank based on calorific value and fixed carbon content (Figure 5), from Stanley P. Schweinfurth, 2009, An introduction to coal quality-Ch. C: US Geological Survey Professional Paper 1625-F.

With high carbon content and low volatile matter, anthracite burns more cleanly than bituminous coal. It is well-suited for boilers associated with engines and space heating. However, it does not soften and vesiculate ("coke") like bituminous coals; therefore, anthracite cannot be used to make coke (porous, high strength product with high carbon content) for steel making. Other limiting factors for anthracite utilization are that it is much less abundant than bituminous coal and, in Pennsylvania, was previously mostly produced from underground mines, which have higher production costs and are more dangerous than surface mines. One of the last big institutional US customers of Pennsylvania anthracite was the New York City School system, but they retired their old coal-fired furnaces in the late 1990's. 

However, PA anthracite is still used in domestic home heating in the NE USA, interestingly common in Amish homesteads. The clean-burning characteristics apparently make it an attractive fuel for Chinese industry, but the following blog article explains that the export market, as of 2014, is dominated by Russia.
(http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/Siberia-hard-coal-crushes-Pa-exports-Amish-boost-US-demand.html)

Rant on fossil fuel age inaccuracies on the web!

In the last couple weeks, I have found a few websites with gross inaccuracies about the geologic age of fossil fuel resources. I was disappointed, but just rolling my eyes, after the first finds one day, mostly because they were not science websites. But the second incident pushed me over the threshold of frustration, partly because it was the second occurrence in so many weeks and partly because it was on a state government energy education webpage.

The first were on various Pennsylvania anthracite region websites, including http://www.blaschakcoal.com/wp-content/uploads/Anthracite-Advantage-Fact-Sheet1.pdf and http://huberbreaker.org/home/history/history-of-anthracite-region/. Blaschak is an anthracite coal producer in northeastern Pennsylvania (PA), USA. Although I found their fact sheet through Google, I cannot find it from within the Blaschak website, a well-done website that describes the current mining practices, reclamation, and coal quality data. On the fact sheet, however, they state "Today, anthracite is the oldest, hardest and cleanest type of coal". The Huber Breaker historical site also calls anthracite the oldest type of coal ("that is, it took nature the longest to form"). About.com (http://energy.about.com/od/Coal/a/Anthracite-Coal.htm) writes

"Anthracite is mined from the oldest geological formations, and therefore has spent the longest time underground and been subjected to the most pressure and heat, making it the most compressed and hardest coal. Hard coals contain greater potential to produce heat energy than do the softer, geologically 'newer' coals." Yikes!

In fact, in Pennsylvania, the rock formations of both the anthracite coals (eastern PA in Valley and Ridge physiographic province) and bituminous coals (western PA in Allegheny Plateau province) are time equivalents (p. 21 [page 2 of .pdf]: https://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/minres/bmr/beneficial_use/10%20CHAPT%202/Chapter%202%20final.pdf). The higher rank of PA anthracite is due to increased deformation and probably advective (heated) groundwater flow (Harrison, M. J., Marshak, S., and Onasch, C. M., 2004, Stratigraphic control of hot fluids on anthracitization, Lackawanna synclinorium, Pennsylvania: Tectonophysics, v. 378, p. 85-103). The coals were deposited during the Pennsylvanian subperiod (323-299 Ma*) of the Carboniferous Period. The folding and thrusting that created the Valley and Ridge province occurred during the late Paleozoic Alleghanian orogeny, but was west of the most intense deformation and metamorphism in the Piedmont.

More concerning is information in the fossil fuel chapter of the award-winning "Energy Quest" education pages (http://energyquest.ca.gov/about.html) of the California Energy Commission (http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter08.html). The page says 

    "There are three major forms of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. All three were formed many hundreds of millions of years ago before the time of the dinosaurs – hence the name fossil fuels. The age they were formed is called the Carboniferous Period. It was part of the Paleozoic Era. "Carboniferous" gets its name from carbon, the basic element in coal and other fossil fuels. . . . Some deposits of coal can be found during the time of the dinosaurs. For example, thin carbon layers can be found during the late Cretaceous Period (65 million years ago) – the time of Tyrannosaurus Rex. But the main deposits of fossil fuels are from the Carboniferous Period."

This is very incorrect! The major coal deposits of western Europe and the eastern US are indeed Carboniferous in age. BUT, world-wide there are coals as old as Devonian, and peats and soft brown coals as young as Pleistocene (epoch of recent Ice Ages). Texas and North Dakota lignites (western US) are Paleogene (just after dinosaurs); "Gondwanan" coals of India, Australia, Antarctica and Africa are Permian (Taylor, G. H., Teichmüller, M., Davis, A., Diessel, C. F. K., Littke, R., Robert, P., 1998, Organic petrology: Gebrüder Borntraeger, Berlin, 704 pages) (see also Geologic Time Scale link at bottom). Petroleum (liquid or gas) has been found in 1 billion year old rocks (thinking of the Nonesuch Formation, White Pine, MI); California's most hydrocarbon-prolific formation is the much younger Miocene Monterey Formation, whose age ranges from 15-4 Ma (http://archives.datapages.com/data/pac_sepm/030/030001/pdfs/87.htm).

I have no idea where these webpage authors got their information! In a deep basin where sediments are sequentially buried by younger and younger rocks, organic matter in the older rocks would be more indurated or metamorphosed. But those discussing anthracite seemed to have gone backwards and assumed that higher coal rank means older, without looking up the actual age of the anthracite coals compared to the bituminous ones on the other side of the state: it is other factors like maximum burial depth, deformation and tectonics that caused the difference in PA coal rank.

The California energy page information is even more disappointing, given the excellent resources right there in state: the California Geological Survey, state public and private universities, and the oil industry itself. I found the webpages because a technology education teacher acquaintance uses them as source information for students on types of conventional and alternative energy. I did send the Energy Quest media contact an e-mail describing the inaccuracy and suggesting (hoping) they contact either the state survey or a university geology department to get their geology information in order.

*Ma= million years ago; Here is a link to the geologic time scale:
www.geosociety.org/science/timescale/timescl.pdf

Wax and Wonderful New Year!

Happy New Year to all! We are now past the anticipation of December, in Western culture, for Christmas and other religious holidays (gatherings of family and loved ones, traditions of gift-giving, greetings of love and friendship), and anticipation for the end of one calendar year and the hopes of the new year. We have also survived the long darkness of the northern winter solstice and welcome slowly lengthening daylight.

At this time of the year, candles have long been popular, originally as a source of light during the long dark cold nights. Our lights of winter and winter holidays have not just been utilitarian, so we can actually see or find our way in the physical darkness, but carry symbolism of hope, knowledge, goodness, truth, “a light shining in the darkness”. Before electrification, candles provided a slow, long-burning source of light and the portability that a campfire or hearth could not. Candles, in regions with reliable electrical service, are now primarily for decoration or ambience, although here in the eastern US, we keep spare candles in case of hurricane/ice storm/blizzard power outages. Certainly no one, hopefully, is using real candles as lighting on interior Christmas trees anymore!

Candles these days are primarily made of paraffin wax, a soft malleable long-chain hydrocarbon derived from coal or petroleum. Beeswax is occasionally used in artisan candles, and, formerly, rendering of animal fats was a major source of candlewax.

Waxy paraffins are generally longer chain hydrocarbons of the alkane series CnH2n+2. Simply, the carbons are linked by single covalent bonds to each other in a chain, and a hydrogen is single-bonded to each of the two remaining bond sites of each carbon; the end carbons have three hydrogens. The first four alkanes in this series (methane, ethane, propane, butane) are gases at room temperature; the next alkanes to C17H36 are liquid. The waxy solid alkanes (or paraffins) have a carbon number of 18 or higher.

Example of alkane structure, ethane C2H6 (chemwiki.ucdavis.edu)

My favorite mental picture of waxy crude hydrocarbons comes from Hollis Hedberg’s seminal 1968 paper on  “Significance of high-wax oils with respect to genesis of petroleum” (American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, vol. 52, p. 736-750): “High wax content is a distinctive and readily detectable characteristic of many petroleums, most simply manifested by a tendency for the oil to congeal at relatively high atmospheric temperatures (high pour-point). This tendency is often dramatically demonstrated by drill-stem tests in which the fluid blown into the air at reservoir temperature falls back with a dull thud as a solid on the derrick floor.”

But despite the New Year, there is still a lot of cold winter, actually most of astronomical winter, left to “weather” since the spring equinox is still almost 3 months away. For two years, I lived in Norway, “Land of the Midnight Sun”, although in Oslo, it is never 24 hours of darkness (about 6 hours daylight in late December). By February, the continuing cold, lack of daylight, lack of holidays until Easter, can make the populace ‘vaersyk’ (weather-sick or, in modern lingo, to have seasonal affective disorder), despite their enthusiasm for winter sports, with an unfortunate high suicide rate. Here in eastern Pennsylvania, 70 miles due west of New York City, we wait now in anxious anticipation of whether Heikki Lunta, the Finnish-American god of snow from the blizzardy Upper Peninsula of Michigan (lived there the record-snowfall winter of 1978-79), will taunt us this year as he did last (I was running out of places to pile up what I shoveled off the sidewalk). 

Eventually it will be spring, with visible new life, new beginnings, less darkness. We can trade our long-chain-paraffin candles for short-chain-propane-powered barbeques and easy outdoor social gatherings in comfortable weather. However, we should actually never wait for a calendar date for new beginnings or steps toward improvement in the human condition, but make it a year-round goal. Best wishes for joy, good health, and peace in 2015!

A side of bacon...or algae?

In mid-November here in Easton, Pennsylvania, before winter temperatures descended on us with a thud and preceding the turkey frenzy of Thanksgiving, Bacon Fest was held in our center square. (Through spring into early fall, our Farmer's Market, the nation's oldest continuous open-air market (~1752) is held in the square.) I did not go to Bacon Fest this year, but last year my dog and I enjoyed some delicious bacony macaroni and cheese, looked at the little piggies before the piglet races, and drooled over beautiful imaginative bacon-ingredient cupcakes in the baking competition. I did not realize until a few years ago, that some people are crazy for bacon!

Last entry, I mentioned the petroleum potential of amorphous organic marine snow. Sometimes I have used frying bacon as an analogy, for non-scientists, to describe petroleum generation from kerogen (insoluble organic matter residue in rocks): heat up the fatty bacon and liquid grease is produced, some greasy gas, and eventually one ends up with more grease and a burnt up solid, if the cook has not been paying attention. Same in a rock: oil-prone organic matter, such as lipid-rich plankton, algae, marine snow, spores/pollen, will, as temperature slowly increases with deep burial over geologic time, eventually produce oil as they are cooked in the "petroleum kitchen" (AKA hydrocarbon kitchen, oil kitchen: yes, they really do use that term in the oil business). A solid refractory high-carbon-content residue usually remains.

You may wonder, why we just don't industrially fry up algae to produce oil? There has actually been research into that, both fossil algae and fresh algae. Thirty-to-forty years ago, after the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, there was a peak of research and pilot plants, in the United States, for producing liquid fuels from Western US oil shale, a rock rich in algal kerogen. The research looked at the feasibility of heating oil shale to produce and extract oil that had not yet been geologically cooked out of the fossil algae. The Green River Shale in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, was a prime target rock. A positive outcome of this research was improved understanding of the chemical reaction kinetics of petroleum generation; kinetic algorithms by Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientists are the standard today in petroleum generation modeling. A major environmental, and political, issue, however, is that some methods can require a lot of water, which would monopolize excessive amounts of upstream Colorado River water to the detriment of downstream agricultural and drinking water customers in the SW US and Mexico.

Considering that farming algae on a large scale would be a possible transportation biofuels source, ExxonMobil, in 2009, supported ongoing research on growing algae on a large (numbers) scale and then extracting the lipids. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/exxon-refocusing-algae-biofuels-program-after-100-million-spend.html; now in 2021, regrettably behind a subscriber pay wall).  Advantages of the algae-farm technique is that it is renewable on the short term, may consume carbon dioxide, and does not include mining or mine waste disposal, like the Synfuels oil shale project would. However, as the Bloomberg article says, existing strains of algae were found not to produce an economically viable amount of product. Research by Exxon's partner will now focus on potential genetic modifications that may in a couple decades be successful. The business reports bemoan the project as a failure since $100 million (out of the original $600 million budgeted) has been spent without success. But actually . . . it is a success of the scientific method! There was a hypothesis, experiments were designed to test it. Even though the hypothesis was not proven true, there is valuable knowledge gained, and a new path proposed. It did cost money, but scientific inquiry does cost money, and advancement of basic science and technology can not happen without it.

It's winter! Marine snow?

Six feet in 24 hours: that was the unfortunate high rate of snowfall in Buffalo, New York, on the shore of Lake Erie on Tuesday, 11/18/2014. Even for a region used to very snowy winters, that was excessive and paralyzing.

Six meters in a million years. That is the accumulation rate for "marine snow". Marine snow, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) informational webpage on the subject (http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/marinesnow.html), is the shower of organic matter falling from upper marine waters to the ocean bottom. The "snow" consists of fluffy agglomerations of generally structureless decaying organic matter, the microbes feasting on it, clay particles, dust, tiny plankton shell pieces. The "flakes" may get to several centimeters. The organic matter may be consumed or depleted before it settles on the bottom, or may accumulate and be a food source at the seafloor. The NOAA page says that 3/4 of the seafloor may be covered with an accumulated organic ooze from marine snow deposition.

One-centimeter aquatic snow aggregate, Lake Constance, Germany.

For photo credit, see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208125759.htm 

Microbes consume organic matter in marine snow and release carbon dioxide, so the velocity of settling affects exposure time and has a direct impact on the amount of CO2 released back to the ocean. The amount and type of particulates in the snow affect the density of a clump and its settling rate. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, Kindler and others (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208125759.htm) conclude that the highly porous marine snow (~95% water) may stall during their journey to the bottom when increasing water density halts settling. When diffusion eventually replaces the less dense water from shallower depths within the flakes with denser water, the agglomerations resume their journey to the bottom.

Besides its importance in the ocean carbon cycle, the amorphous organic matter (AOM) in marine snow is a great petroleum precursor. If preserved, due to low or zero oxygen in ocean floor sediments or overlying waters, and buried to a few km or more, the AOM will start producing liquid hydrocarbons. A good description of amorphous organic matter and various formation pathways, modern and ancient, is found in the 1995 text "Sedimentary Organic Matter" by R. V. Tyson. Pacton and others (2011; http://www.climategeology.ethz.ch/publications/2011a_Pacton_et_al.pdf) describe the structures and process of formation of amorphous organic matter at the sediment/water interface.

Veterans Day and carbon helping those who served

Today in the United States is Veterans' Day, a federal holiday honoring all Americans who have served in the military. Originally, this day was called Armistice Day, commemorating the end, by treaty, of hostilities on 11/11/1918 at 11:00 a.m. (in western Europe) in World War I, "the war to end all wars". However, after World War II, the day was expanded and renamed to honor all who have served in the armed forces. My grandfather served in Europe in WWI: he had been in the cavalry previously, riding a horse in the Mexican Expedition against Pancho Villa in 1916, but by the time of US involvement in WWI, his unit did not use horses, but tanks, as the "cavalry" still does today.

Googling his name online, I found my grandfather was reported to have been "wounded, degree undetermined" in September 1918. I never remember hearing about or noticing this injury, so it obviously must not have been debilitating. Hundreds of veterans of all wars, however, do live with permanent physical and mental disabilities. There is a new monument opened recently in Washington, DC, at the southwest foot of Capitol Hill, American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial, that honors the sacrifice of military members severely wounded.

Looking to the south, across star-shaped and rectangular reflecting infinity pools to Voices of Veterans walls.

To the north towards the Botanic Gardens and US Capitol.

The bottom quote in the above portion of the Voices of Veterans wall is by Harold Russell, a World War II veteran who lost both his hands in a 1944 training accident. He is most famous for his portrayal of a returning wounded soldier, Homer Parrish, in "The Best Years of Our Lives" which won Best Picture at the 1947 Academy Awards. Russell won two Oscars: Best Supporting Actor and an honorary award for "bringing hope and courage to fellow veterans". I have seen the movie through at least once, but my favorite part, that I have seen several times, is at the end, when Homer, who has emotionally pushed away his fiancée since his return, accepts her love and commitment after she insists on helping him remove his prostheses getting ready for bed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-VB9JnppAU).

In the movie, Russell's prostheses appear to be primarily metal with leather. Charlie McGonegal, quoted above Russell on the Voices of Veterans wall, lost both arms in WWI and is featured in a 1944 War Department film, "Meet McGonegal", made to show how a double amputee can successfully manage every-day tasks. From watching the film, McGonegal's prostheses may include plastic.(McGonegal visited and worked with Russell during his recovery period, described in the book, Enabling Lives, 1999.)

A 2012 article from Collector's Weekly ("War and Prothetics: How Veterans Fought for the Perfect Artificial Limb; http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/war-and-prosthetics/) describes the history of prosthetic development and how, regrettably, war injuries have driven advancements in this technology, even though there are more US amputees due to diabetes. According to the article, plastics were first used by the Germans, after WWI, in prosthetic manufacture. Among the more space-age materials now used are carbon-fiber composites which have carbon fibers for reinforcement and a polymer matrix binder. Carbon fibers are manufactured primarily from petroleum-refinery byproducts or, rarely, directly from petroleum pitch or coal tar. These carbon materials provide strength and flexibility and are relatively lightweight. Carbon composites have myriad automotive and aerospace applications and are popular materials in sports equipment. An internet search reveals that prosthetic feet seem to be the most common artificial limbs using carbon composites. Of course, an important carbon fiber in military applications is Kevlar, used in body armor to protect from injury those that volunteer to defend their countries in the armed forces.

"Deep Carbon Through Deep Time" short course, GSA 2014

On Saturday, October 18, during the 2014 Geological Society of America annual meeting in Vancouver, I attended the short course “Deep Carbon Through Deep Time” sponsored by the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO, ten-year interdisciplinary international project originally administered out of the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington [CIW], now [2022] at Institut de Physique du globe de Paris) and the Mineralogical Society of America. Having experience, either long-term or in passing, with a temperature range of carbon-bearing or organic rocks from mushy ocean floor muds through the anchizone to graphitic schists, I was interested in boldly going deeper than I carbonaceously had gone before.

What is the purpose of the Deep Carbon Observatory initiative? To quote from the short course description, “Yet in spite of carbon’s importance to geology, many aspects of the physical, chemical, and biological behavior of Earth’s subsurface carbon-bearing systems remain unresolved. . . How do deep reservoirs form and evolve? How does carbon move from one deep repository to another?”

Since most of us, when we think of the carbon cycle, usually consider the relatively-shallow upper crust, and Phanerozoic oceans and atmosphere, this short course could have been called “Deeper Carbon Through Deeper Time” because that is where it took me. As Robert Hazen, DCO Executive Director, and Craig Schiffries, DCO Director and former GSA Director for Geoscience Policy, wrote in the first chapter, "Why Deep Carbon?" in Carbon in Earth (2013, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, Volume 75; http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/RIM/RiMG075/RiMG075_Ch01.pdf), possibly 90% of the earth's carbon may be in the Earth's deep interior: if carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, used as a compositional model for early planets, have 10-100 times the concentration of carbon as the earth's known carbon reservoirs, where is our missing carbon? Hazen and Schiffries write that identifying and quantifying carbon fluxes to and from the mantle are key in answering this question.

Seven speakers in the short course covered a range of topics within the four DCO communities (extreme physics and chemistry; reservoirs and fluxes; deep life; deep energy) including deep (mantle/core) carbon cycle, diamonds, volcano outgassing, carbon fluids, deep extremophiles. These talks averaged 45-minutes to an hour each, which for soporific me in a small windowless conference room, could have meant a constant battle to stay awake, but I found the talks so gripping that only a couple times all day did I have to pinch myself.

A common theme among the talks was the history of the carbon itself: where it is now, where it had been, how long it was there: transport, reservoirs, residence time (=cycle time). Radiometric age dating, trace element geochemistry, and staple isotopes are among the techniques used on natural samples obtained through deep drilling or that have been brought within our relatively shallow sampling reach by geologic processes (i.e. diamonds). The magnitude of transit in time and depth for Earth carbon was apparent in Steve Shirey's (CIW) diamond talk in which inclusions captured within those crystals record ancient and profound journeys. While I have familiarity with crustal scale advective heat flow in basin thermal modeling, and some of that research has been associated with deep extremophile studies (how hot was the microbes’ environment), it was fascinating to hear Barbara Sherwood Lollar talk about adjacent (meter-scale), but separate, water sources in deep South African gold mines where one source had relatively young meteoric water and the other, unmixed, was millions of years old, both bearing microbes. Sherwood Lollar has also identified 1.5 billion-year-old fluid (non-microbial-bearing) in fractures in a deep mine in Ontario.

While there was a lot of new information presented, relative to my own background, the major take-away for me was a new or expanded scope of thinking about Earth carbon history and distribution. Perhaps the best example was the first talk by Bob Hazen on Mineral Evolution. From our earliest education as geologists, we are aware that plate tectonics, lithospheric differentiation, oxygen atmosphere, life were not present at planet formation, but evolved over the first few billion years of Earth history. However, I never knew or considered that the number of and variety within minerals has changed also, even though now this seems blatantly logical. Hazen’s talk went beyond the Earth and its infancy to mention where the first mineral formed: diamond condensed from supernova vapor in the early universe. The big stunner for some of us was that there are organic minerals, taking the definition of mineral as anything that creates a diffraction pattern, not the general inorganic vs. organic classifier we are initially taught.

Although the DCO initiative focuses on carbon, this endeavor encompasses essentially all disciplines of the earth sciences. I started to list the involved disciplines that came to mind, but realized I was listing everything under the geoscience umbrella. While participating researchers focus on what their own specialties can add to carbon knowledge, the conversation fostered by the DCO will produce a comprehensive and connected understanding of the Earth carbon system, and expand our individual scientific experience from local to “cosmos”-politan in terms of time, space, and process.

I highly recommend Carbon in Earth, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, Volume 75 (2013, 680 pages), the medial publication of the 10-year DCO project. Many of the speakers at the short course are authors of chapters in this volume. It (and its spectacular graphics) is available as an Open Access publication at http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/RIM/Rim75.html.