Titanic coal

            “A steady roar thundered across the water as everything moveable broke loose. There had never been a mixture like it-–29 boilers . . .the jeweled copy of the Rubaiyat . . . 800 cases of shelled walnuts . . . 15,000 bottles of ale and stout . . . huge anchor chains (each link weighed 175 pounds) . . . 30 cases of golf clubs and tennis rackets for Spalding . . . Eleanor Widener’s trousseau . . . tons of coal . . .”

            Walter Lord, A Night to Remember (1955)

Still from movie Titanic (1997)

(This blog has been updated slightly [links checked, new information], April 2018.)
       This April is the 103rd anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. In 2007, I visited "Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition" at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, just before the start of that year’s combined meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP) and the International Committee on Coal and Organic Petrology (ICCP). The museum is in the first block south of the majestic Empress Hotel on the inner harbor of Victoria. (I followed up my early Friday evening time-ticketed exhibit visit with supper and cocktail on the veranda of the Empress.) The Titanic, of course, is the great British steamship, touted as "unsinkable", that, on its maiden voyage from England to New York, struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic late on Sunday night, April 14, 1912; it sank beneath the ocean surface a few hours later in the early morning of April 15. The traveling exhibit, both through passenger and steamship effects recovered from the seafloor, and through recreations of the ship's interior, told the story of the disaster, life on board, the variety of passengers and their reasons for sailing. The exhibit exited at a gift shop; I purchased a pendant that enclosed a small piece of Titanic coal from the seafloor. I thought that was an appropriate remembrance for me, being 1) a coal petrologist, and 2) born on April 15.

        I had been aware that some of the coal from Titanic had been recovered and sold as part of the fundraising for Titanic recovery and research. Coal lumps, in fact, are the only recovered artifacts that have been ruled legal for sale since they are considered "natural" objects and not man-made (http://law.lclark.edu/live/files/11855-lcb163art8zekalapdf). Although some online photos or details on certificates of authenticity (COA) indicate that coal lumps could be very large (=>3 kg), one photo taken in a Titanic coal bunker before sailing shows mostly fist-size coal. Smaller pieces sold, including those in jewelry or crushed coal mounts, are taken from the larger pieces, and the COA for those specimens are, therefore, derivative. For example, the "object number" for the coal in my pendant is 94/0036: 1994 being the year of collection and 36 the sample number. An onboard photo of a crew member holding the supposed original 94/0036 coal nodule shows it to be about 30 cm x 25 cm x 10 cm. (This photo is no longer easy to find online but sometimes accompanies small pieces of coal for sale with the 94/0036 COA.) However, a Google image search for just "Titanic coal" produces several offered coal fragments, with COAs of different styles, but the same 94/0036 number! Certainly, many small pieces could be derived from the large original nodule, but is the volume sum of marketed pieces greater than the original whole? The seller at the above link does mention concern with authenticity of the coal being offered. (Addendum, June 11, 2015: Three days ago, I visited the permanent Titanic exhibit at the Luxor casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The one large lump of coal on display had the sample number, 94/0036.075: same as the numbers mentioned above, but with 3 more digits after a decimal point. My guess is that 94/0036 is a batch number for all coal retrieved in the 1994 expedition, and that ".075" is a nodule/lump number that is not included on samples offered for sale.)

        Titanic could hold 6611 tons of coal in bunkers and an additional 1092 tons in Hold 3 (Hutchings and de Kerbrech, 2011; full citations at end of this post). There are variable reports on how much coal was onboard at sailing. Sheehan and Sickels-Taves (2002) state just under 6000 tons; website http://atlanticliners.com/white_star_home/titanic_home/ says 5892 tons. Essenhigh (2004) writes that the six bunkers were only half full with 800 tons each (=4800 tons). Smith (2005) cites a website (no longer active) that reported 4427 tons were in the bunkers; Palmer and others (2003) said "more than 4000 metric tons". Steam for the two steam engines and one steam turbine was produced in 29 boilers that contained 159 furnaces. Six hundred tons of coal/day were shoveled into the furnaces around the clock by a total complement of 176 firemen ((Hutchings and de Kerbrech, 2011). There were 73 coal trimmers who handled the coal from loading to maintenance in the bunkers and delivery to the firemen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_trimmer). One hundred tons of coal ash were disposed at sea each day (Hutchings and de Kerbrech, 2011).  Sheehan and Sickels-Taves (2002) state that the Titanic sank with 2500 tons of coal out of the original load. Coal has been recovered from Titanic ocean bottom debris fields since 1987; coal in various studies and available for sale online is from expeditions in 1994 and 2000.

        Based on testimony of surviving crewmen, there is good evidence for a coal fire in one of the bunkers at the time of sailing. Bunker fires were not uncommon on steamships, caused by spontaneous combustion within the piled coal. The usual solution to quell the fire was to sail at full speed to quickly shovel down the coal pile until the smoldering coal could be removed by simply adding it to the furnaces. However, Titanic survivor reports are not consistent regarding 1) whether the fire started around the time of sailing from Southampton or earlier during sea trials in early April; 2) if the fire was out by Saturday, April 13, or still smoldering at collision; 3) if heat from the fire damaged the adjacent watertight bulkhead; and 4) in what bunker was the fire. Essenhigh (2004), calculating rate of fire spread versus coal pile drawdown, assumed the fire was probably in the top half of the bunker pile, however, Fireman John Dilley testified in 1912 that the fire was at the bottom of the coal pile. There are some, including Essenhigh (2004), who speculate that running full speed through the ice field on April 14 was not to break an Atlantic-crossing speed record but to get rid of the burning bunkered coal, assuming that the fire had not been extinguished the day before. In January 2017, a UK Channel 4 documentary, "Titanic, the New Evidence", proposed that both increased speed and weakening/damage to the hull and bunker bulkhead, due to coal fire heat, were instrumental in the sinking; while the presence of a coal fire, at least after sailing from Southampton, seems undisputed, fatal fire-induced metal damage is still a contentious issue (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coal-fire-may-have-helped-sink-titanic-180961699/ ; https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/01/06/coal-fire-sink-the-titanic/ ).

        I was curious if any analysis of recovered Titanic coal had been undertaken. A 2012 discussion in an online Titanic forum mentions that an analysis of coal recovered in 1994 concluded there were 5 or more geographic coal sources including Pennsylvania anthracite. The "chat" also says that the technical analysis is no longer online (perhaps it is the same as the now-defunct website cited by Smith (2005)). I also could not find any such study that matches those results. However, there are available published scientific studies, using modest-size sample sets, by two groups of researchers. The earliest is by Michael Sheehan and Lauren Sickels-Taves (in 2002 at Eastern Michigan University) from their presentation at a symposium on materials issues in archaeology. The second group of authors (Palmer et al., 2003) presented their findings at both the 2002 Pittsburgh Coal conference and the 2003 TSOP annual meeting in Washington, DC.

        Sheehan and Sickels-Taves, importantly, detail the historic background of coal labor and supply issues in the United Kingdom in spring 1912 that affected the availability and sources of coal loaded on Titanic. From February 22-April 6, 1912, ending just before Titanic's sailing from Southampton, England, on April 10, there was a major UK coal strike that limited the national supply of coal. Some ship sailings were cancelled due to the strike. However, in preparation for the celebrated maiden voyage of Titanic, White Star Line, owner of the ship, scavenged leftover coal in Southampton from other ships of the International Mercantile Marine trust, of which White Star was a member, or had ships already at sea take on extra coal in non-British ports. Sheehan and Sickels-Taves mention that extra coal sacks were even stockpiled in the Second Class public rooms of Titanic's sister ship, Olympic. It is important to note that coal had been already loaded on Titanic at Belfast for the sea trials (Smith, 2005); those coals, I assume, are British since there are few Irish coals and Belfast is close to major British coalfields across the Irish Sea. 

        Sheehan and Sickels-Taves examined 19 coal nodules that were recovered in 2000. They used samples made available to them. They state there was no scientific sampling plan in seafloor recovery, and, therefore, samples may not be representative of the actual range and distribution of coal types onboard. Fifty grams taken from each nodule were used for petrographic, palynological, and trace element analysis (latter data not reported). Testing was done by TES Bretby (formerly Scientific Services Divison of British Coal), UK, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI), USA.  

        The range of mean vitrinite reflectance for the 19 samples is 0.99% to 2.28% ((British Standard 6127=ISO 7404-5). (See my first blog post in October 2014 for description of 'vitrinite reflectance'.) Fifteen samples are "medium or low volatile bituminous coals with reflectance values between 1.19-1.99%"; eight have reflectances between 1.65 and 1.76%. Only one sample has reflectance greater than 2%, the 2.28%R_o semi-anthracite sample. This range of maturity is consistent with the rank variation within the South Wales Coalfield, which it seems the authors assume is the primary British source of Titanic coal. One other reflectance data point is available for Titanic coal: a medium volatile bituminous 1.15%R_o from the only sample obtained by Smith (2005).

        Three high volatile bituminous coals (0.99-1.09%R_o) of Sheehan and Sickels-Taves were submitted for palynological analysis. Results indicate all are Upper Carboniferous, but stratigraphic location within the British Coal Measures could not be determined. One sample, 7B (0.99%R_o) had a type of spore rare in British coals. The authors also say the rare spore type, not identified, is not common in the eastern USA, but speculate it is still possible the sample could be from an eastern US coal transported to Southampton by the Olympic.

        Palmer and others (2002, 2003) examined 20 samples chosen by the RMS Titanic, Inc. curator because "each piece appeared to be different". Their fixed carbon and volatile matter results indicated an equal distribution of low, medium, and high volatile bituminous coals among the samples. Ash yields are more consistent with British coals than US coals. Trace elements were analyzed by neutron activation, and results were compared to a data base of 24 British coals and 1450 US coals from beds that had been exploited in 1912. Rare earth element data "suggest. . . five distinct sources" (Palmer and others, 2003). Iron, potassium, and arsenic concentration range and median values are more similar to British coals. For most elements, however, the Titanic values were less than both US and UK coals, which the authors suggest is due to differences in the Titanic coal, mined in 1912, versus data base samples collected decades later from the same mine or seam.

        Two of Palmer and others’ samples yielded spores for palynological study. The authors list identified species of the spore assemblages which indicate a Carboniferous Langsettian (Westphalian A) age. They report that nearly all British coalfields contain such beds, but few US coals mined in 1912 were that age.

        One research goal of Palmer and others was to determine the environmental effect of shipwrecked coal in a deep marine setting. In the Titanic samples, higher iodine and bromine than either US or UK coals suggests absorption of those elements from seawater; chlorine data indicates some leaching of that element from the coal. Otherwise the coals are unaltered, and there appears to be “minimal environmental impact” since 1912.

        Both scientific studies conclude most coal samples examined were sourced in Britain. Sheehan and Sickels-Taves write that the limited Titanic sample set shows "considerable uniformity" consistent with usual British sources of coal used by White Star. Although it is known that ships like the Olympic onloaded extra coal from non-British ports during the 1912 strike, it does not appear, with the possible exception of their low-rank sample 7B, that non-typical coals were a significant portion of Titanic fuel. Palmer and others, using two different statistical methods, concluded that 12 samples are probably from the UK, three from US, but provenance of the other four cannot be clearly assigned.

        With results indicating that some of Titanic’s coal may be from the United States, what were the typical US sources of coal for White Star Line ships? The Coal and Coal Trade Journal (vol. 22) wrote in May 23, 1883, that White Star Line renewed a contract with New Central Coal Company of Maryland to fuel their ships in American ports. That company mined Carboniferous low volatile bituminous coal (http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2010/5152/pdf/sir2010-5152_fig2.pdf) in the western Maryland Georges Creek basin. I could not find if a contract continued to 1912. Ten years later, the Colliery Engineer (volume 14, August 1893) mentioned a White Star US contract alluding to a Pocahontas coalfield source (West Virginia/Virginia; medium to low volatile bituminous). Gas World (v. 20, March 31, 1894) also mentioned that White Star Line used Pocahontas coal. Gas World continued that Pocahontas was the preferred coal of the US Navy, and some steamships had set Atlantic crossing records using the same. They wrote that Pocahontas coal "is declared by a Newcastle analyst to be 'equal to the best Welsh steam coal, and excellent coal for steam-raising purposes.'" This still leaves questions, however, about the source of high volatile bituminous coals identified by both Sheehan and Sickels-Taves (their possible-US sample 7B) and Palmer and others.

        The results of the scientific studies do call into question colliery source data or coal rank given on some of the Titanic coal COA and labels currently found online. As mentioned earlier, some labels state the rank is anthracite; one COA, without rank assignment, claims that the mine of origin is Six Bells Mine, South Wales Coal Fields, UK (closed since 1988). The study by Sheehan and Sickels-Taves clearly indicates that the exact mine of origin for a particular lump of coal cannot be ascertained with certainty even if the rank is determined. An included table by TES Bretby shows possible early 20th-century South Wales colliery associations for sample reflectance clusters. Most reflectances are correlated with more than one mine, although only the Lake Windsor colliery (Ynysybwl, Wales) is listed for the rank range of the eight 1.65-1.76%R_o samples. In addition, none of the studied coal, recovered in 2000, is, in fact, anthracite, but the limited number of samples does not rule out anthracite onboard. 

        "Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition" at Victoria was one of the itinerant exhibitions of RMS Titanic, Inc.; they have a permanent artifact exhibit now at the Luxor (pyramid-shaped casino) in Las Vegas. Another excellent exhibit of Titanic effects, mostly flotsam, is the permanent one at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia (https://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca/what-see-do/titanic-unsinkable-ship-and-halifax). The flotsam was picked up at sea by both rescue-and-recovery and commercial boats soon after the sinking. Copies of some items were incorporated into James Cameron's 1997 film, Titanic: a stairway newel post ornament like the one shot off the grand staircase, and an entryway entablature panel similar to what Kate Winslet floats on after the ship goes down (the real one is about half the size of the movie version). One hundred fifty victims of the Titanic sinking are buried in Halifax.

     Essenhigh, R.H., 2004, What sank the Titanic? The possible contribution of the bunker fire (abs.): Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program, Vol. 36, No. 5, p. 42.

     Hutchings, D. and de Kerbrech, R., 2011, RMS Titanic Manual: 1909-1912 (Olympic Class): Haynes Owners’ Workshop Manual Series, Zenith Press, 160 pages.

    Palmer, C.A., Finkelman, R.B., Luttrell, G.H., 2002. Coal from aMid-Atlantic Ocean shipwreck: the source of the coal in the Titanic and effects of exposure to seawater. Nineteenth Annual International Pittsburgh Coal Conference, CD-ROM. This citation added July 2020. (Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291216076_The_source_of_the_coal_on_the_Titanic_and_effects_of_exposure_to_seawater ; this article includes the raw data from the elemental analyses that is only graphed and summarized in the 2003 TSOP abstract.)

     Palmer, C. A., Finkelman, R. B., Luttrell, G. H., Zhang, C., and Eble, C., 2003, The source of the coal in the Titanic and effects of exposure to seawater: Program and Abstracts for the 20th Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology, v. 20, p. 54-58.

     Sheehan, M.S., and Sickels-Taves, L.B, 2002, The technological analysis of RMS Titanic’s Coal: The enhancement of archaeological research: Material Research Society Symposium Proceedings, vol. 712, p. 525-532 (Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology VI: Symposium held November 26-30, 2001, Boston, Massachusetts, USA).

     Smith, A.H.V., 2005, Coal microscopy in the service of archeology: International Journal of Coal Geology, v. 62, p. 49-59. (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.895.8578&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

(This blog post, with very minor changes, appeared earlier as an article in the March 2015 edition of the TSOP newsletter (https://www.tsop.org/newsletters/32_1.pdf)

Grace Hopper, software pioneer

In early 1974, as I was entering the building of my first apartment, River House in Arlington, Virginia, by the Pentagon, I saw across the lobby the elevator closing on what seemed like an incongruity: a petite older gray-haired lady in a blue Navy captain's uniform with the four wide gold stripes on the cuff. Unthreatening sweetness vs. authority.

Capt. Grace Murray Hopper in 1978. Photo by Lynn Gilbert, downloaded from Wikipedia.

River House, S. Joyce Street, Arlington, Virginia, and Grace Hopper Park (2011)

Several weeks later, I, a US Department of State employee at the time, took a two-week Introduction to Computing course at the Department of Defense Computer Institute (DODCI) at the Navy Yard in neighboring Washington, DC. Speaking the first afternoon was the elevator woman, Navy Captain Grace Hopper (December 6, 1906- January 1, 1992), a pioneer in computing software. Memorable that afternoon was her brilliant (and well-known) analogy of a "nanosecond" and the speed of computing and electronic communication: an 11.8 inch (29.97 cm) length of thin colored telephone wire representing the maximum distance electrons travel in one-billionth of a second at the speed of light (in a vacuum). Captain, and eventually Rear Admiral, Hopper always carried with her a bundle of "nanoseconds", and we were each gifted with our own. She explains nanoseconds here to David Letterman.

My own "nanoseconds" that I cut from colored telephone wire similar to those Hopper always carried with her.

The next day, on my way to catch a bus to the Navy Yard, I ran into Hopper in the lobby of our apartment building. I introduced myself, telling her I was in the computer class. As her Navy driver pulled up, she generously offered me a ride in her government car. I wish I remembered the details of our conversation! I only lived in the building a month or two more, and our subsequent interactions were just passing greetings.

Hopper received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from Vassar College, one of the pre-eminent women's colleges of the 20th century before admitting men in 1969. (I went to Smith College, another "Seven Sisters" school and still all women; maybe we talked about women's higher education in her limo?) After getting a PhD in math from Yale, Hopper taught at Vassar until joining the Navy during World War II.  She was a programmer on the Navy's Mark I electro-mechanical computer at Harvard; after the war, she worked on UNIVAC (the second general-purpose electronic computer according to Wikipedia) at Remington Rand. In 1967, she returned again to active duty with the Navy .

Hopper's life and achievements were chronicled this January (2015) in the short (16 minutes) ESPN FiveThirtyEight documentary, The Queen of Code. During Women's History Month in March 2015, National Public Radio interviewed the documentary's director (http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2015/03/07/390247203/grace-hopper-the-queen-of-code-would-have-hated-that-title). Also during WHM, the National Science Foundation highlighted several pioneering women in STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and math), connecting these "names you should know" with current female scientists supported by NSF. They included seven women who worked on the ENIAC computer (the first general-purpose electronic computer) during World War II. While Hopper's Mark I was Navy-funded housed at Harvard, ENIAC was supported by the US Army and situated at the University of Pennsylvania. Both computers were used in conventional ballistic and atomic bomb research calculations. The women working on ENIAC were not named in official documents or photographs at the time; they have since been inducted into the Women in Technology Hall of Fame. If you have seen the movie, Imitation Game, about British WWII cryptography, you will be aware of the difficulty and prejudice that talented women in mathematics faced for a long time in being accepted seriously and having access to the same job opportunities as men.

Hopper's best-known achievement is the programming language, COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language). It was designed to be a language that could be shared among different computers and be more like regular English, therefore more accessible to non-scientists. I personally see it as the beginning of making computing more user-friendly. I never had to use COBOL. In a previous blog, I mentioned that my short experience with FORTRAN, in 1969, was one factor influencing my decision to be an undergraduate history major. (The DODCI course in 1974 did not teach coding, but covered systems analysis, applications, flow charts.) My serious foray into coding was during my geology Master's degree at Dartmouth College, the birthplace of BASIC programming language. Without the cumbersome formatting statements of FORTRAN and, like COBOL, more like regular English, BASIC was much more transparent to me and easier to use. I learned to enjoy "debugging" programs (Hopper is credited with originating the computing terms "bug" and "debugging"). Dartmouth required geology grad students to be able to write a moderately-complex computer program and that was easily solved by taking either Aqueous Geochemistry or Clay Mineralogy whose final semester projects were programs. Subsequently, my first introduction to coal petrology was programming, in BASIC, the collection of liptinite epifluorescence spectral data through an analog/digital converter that connected a microscope to an Apple 2 computer (this was 1982 at Southern Illinois University; lipid-rich liptinites do glow in UV and blue light). On desktop computers at that time, one had to be very thrifty with program size. I was limited to 512K (that's KILObytes) for the program steps and data collected within the program. And now I complain that my iPhone does not have enough GIGAbytes for my photos!

The Apple 2 did not have the "desktop" display and file folder management system we know today, just a line entry typing screen. Word processing at Dartmouth in the early 1980's was through commands in BASIC on time-sharing terminals. We got our first home Macintosh, with MacWrite, in about 1986. The current 21^st-century user interface on a computer, smart phone, computer game, and in word processing, graphics, spreadsheet and other applications is layers above the programming language that creates what we see on the screen. This makes digital technology accessible to all; Grace Hopper's programming vision was an essential early step.

Plaque, Grace Murray Hopper Park, So. Joyce Street, Arlington, VA (2011)

 Addedum (1/12/16): Admiral Hopper mentioned in the State of the Union address. Additional biographical information: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/22/honoring-grace-hopper 

"to seek out new life" even if not carbon-based. . .

To me as a geologist, one of the most intriguing Star Trek (original series) episodes is “Devil in the Dark” (Season 1, Episode 25), which I saw again in rerun last weekend:

Spock: “Life as we know it is universally based on some combination of carbon compounds, but what if life exists based on another element? For instance, silicon.”

The "Devil in the Dark" is the "Horta", a mobile living sentient blob that tunnels through rock in the subsurface of planet Janus 6, killing human miners who unknowingly destroyed its spherical eggs. The Horta is not an organic carbon lifeform, but instead is silicon-based. At the time of this episode's first airing in 1967, almost 48 years ago to the day, I had not studied geology yet and was unfamiliar with the silicon basis of most Earth-forming minerals, so the geologic significance was lost on me. Now, however, I appreciate the scientific/geologic foundation behind the concept of the Horta. This story is really an imagination of an alternate or opposite reality, kind of like a planetary Bizarro world (reference either Seinfeld episode, “Bizarro Jerry” Season 8, episode 3, or Bizarro of the Superman universe). 

Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), communicating with the Horta through a Vulcan mind meld.

The home planet of the silicon-based Horta was not a Class M or Earth-like planet; according to the internet fan site Memory Alpha, Janus 6 was geologically inactive and had no atmosphere. Our own knowledge, so far, of unusual chemistry or processes in organic life is from Earth environments beyond the comfort level of humans, such as habitats that lack oxygen or have extreme cold or hot temperatures. "Extreme" biochemistry goes beyond chemical processes and includes incorporation of non-typical elements in genetic material: in saline Mono Lake, California, arsenic has been found to replace phosphorous in DNA and proteins of the bacteria GFAJ-1. The arsenic-phosphorous and silicon-carbon exchanges are examples of chemical swaps of elements in the same periodic table group (column) with similar outer electron shells. The article points out, however, that a total substitution of one element for another in Earthly biota would doom an organism.

Is it possible that in other parts of the universe we can find elements we have not imagined, like the Star Trek element pergium mined on Janus 6 or the warp-core fuel dilithium? (Fictional dilithium is an element, not a molecule of two lithiums.) Despite the expanse of the universe, we do understand the formation processes of elements produced during pre-supernova star evolution (hydrogen, helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, iron) and of higher mass elements in post-iron nova/supernova stellar rebound explosions . However, I am guessing there may well be new minerals, not known on Earth, on extraterrestrial planets and moons. As I mentioned in my blog post of November 5, 2014, on the “Deep Carbon Through Deep Time” short course, Robert Hazen described how species of minerals have appeared and evolved on Earth through time in response to surface and subsurface processes. Mineral evolution and resulting mineral assemblages on other extraterrestrial bodies may be different based on element distribution within proto-solar system clouds, resulting initial composition of planetary and lunar bodies, presence or absence of tectonic processes, extremes of temperature and pressure. And this includes organic minerals: Hazen pointed out there are such species since the definition of a mineral is now something that creates a diffraction pattern (Hazen and others, p. 32, Carbon in Earth, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, vol. 75). Differences in mineral evolution, in addition to non-Earth-like extreme physical conditions, may in turn give rise, I imagine, to different microbes and pre-biotic molecules, since it is known that on Earth minerals serve as electron donors, or energy sources, for lithoautotrophic microbes (Colwell and D’Hondt, p. 558, Carbon in Earth).

Speaking of alien life, Spock's physical make-up also includes an alternate chemistry. Vulcan blood is green because it is copper-based. If analogous to human Earthling blood, the copper would be chelated in the middle of the square porphyrin (tetrapyrrole) molecule in place of iron. In people with lead poisoning, lead replaces the iron, and, logically, a simple blood density test can identify the problem. The porphyrin structure that is part of the chlorophyll molecule in plants has magnesium as the chelated metal. However, during organic diagenesis and petroleum formation, vanadium and nickel from pore waters in sediments replace the magnesium; the proportion of V to Ni [V/(V+Ni)] in petroleum porphyrins depends on the oxidation/reduction potential (oxic vs. anoxic) of the sediments and can be used as a paleoenvironmental indicator.  (The Biomarker Guide: Biomarkers and isotopes in petroleum systems and Earth, 2005, by Kenneth Peters, Clifford Walters, J. Michael Moldowan). 

Chief Mining Engineer Vanderburg in “Devil in the Dark”:  ". . . Look, we didn't call you here so you could collect rocks." 

Geologists on the starship Enterprise? There is one original-series Star Trek episode in which a crew member is identified as a geologist (“That Which Survives”, Season 3, Episode 17). His character name was even listed in IMDB.com for several years as “Lt. D'Amato, Geologist”. But D’Amato, geologist on the Away Team, not in any previous episodes in the series, meets his demise, despite wearing a blue shirt, within the first 10 minutes of the story. . . saw that coming light-years away!

When I started college in fall 1969, I had been an avid follower of the US space program and thought I might major in Astronomy, Russian studies or Asian studies. I ended up majoring in History with a minor in Geology, once I realized how interesting mineralogy could be. In hindsight, I think my original interest in majoring in Astronomy was really an interest in Planetary Geology. (I was a bit disappointed to realize that academic astronomy is actually physics and math in disguise, and this was when the college math department computer was a single-job card-loading Fortran machine! Syntax errors-Aaargh!) However, in 1969, despite the first Apollo landing in July, and three years of Star Trek, a separate university concentration in Planetary Geology was not yet off the ground.

I close with a nod to Leonard Nimoy (March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015): you will “live long and prosper” in the minds and hearts of those who dream of, imagine and yearn to explore the wonders of the universe. An excellent blog post by a geologist on Nimoy/Spock as an inspiration and role model for young scientists can be found at http://blogs.agu.org/magmacumlaude/2015/03/05/importance-fictional-role-models/ . (I actually really separately, before reading Jessica's blog and without mind meld, started writing this post and had included a photo of Spock with the Horta and the reference to geologist D'Amato. Explorers thinking alike!)

Pennsylvania anthracite culm heaps: A burning issue

In the month(!) since my last blog post, I have been busy doing other writing: finishing up the first draft of a conference paper and writing an article on “Titanic Coal” for The Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP) spring newsletter. The latter will be posted on this blog on April 15, the anniversary of the sinking. In researching what was known about sources/amount of coal on the Titanic, I found that there is strong evidence from crew survivors that a fire smoldered in piled coal in one of the fuel bunkers. Apparently coal fires were not uncommon onboard steamships or in coal waste heaps. Here in eastern Pennsylvania, coal waste dumps are called culm heaps or culm banks.  

The first time I heard the word “culm” was way back in the summer of 1961. My family had just moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, about 75 miles north of New York City. My father had a new job with Daystrom-Weston there. However, in the middle of the summer, the company division my father worked for was moved to Archbald, Pennsylvania (PA), between Scranton and Carbondale in the Northern Anthracite coalfield. So, one weekend, we (mother, father, four children ages 3-10) drove three hours west to the Scranton area to check it out. Saturday was rainy and dreary, but Sunday was clear with a better view of the countryside. Memorable were large, taller-than-houses black steaming piles, alongside or easily seen from the road. I asked my father what they were; he told me culm heaps, waste from the coal mines.

"Burning culm dump, Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States. Culms are huge dumps of coal mine waste some of which burn incessantly." Postcard, 1908.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burning_Culm_Dump,_Scranton,_PA.jpg

Although fire in piled coal can start spontaneously, The Scranton Times-Tribune recently reported in January 2015, that the PA Department of Environmental Protection says most culm fires these days start from people burning trash near the heaps (http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/dep-archbald-culm-fire-likely-quenched-1.1812321). The article states that there are at least 80 coal fires, either in culm dumps or underground mines, in Pennsylvania. Culm fires are a source of greenhouse gases in general, plus give off carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and various toxic trace elements (http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/culm-dump-fire-still-burning-in-fell-twp-1.1642374), and may pose not just an environmental danger to nearby residents but also the danger of setting adjacent coal seams on fire.  Those articles plus http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/local-history-coal-fires-plagued-the-region-for-decades-1.1671355 describe various methods to extinguish culm fires and emphasize that it is both difficult and expensive to put out such fires for good.

Fell Township, PA, coal waste dump fire, February 2014, The Scranton Times-Tribune.

Pennsylvania culm heaps are a mixture of waste shale and mixed coal-shale fragments; John Oelbracht, plant manager at Westwood Generating, described it as "'rock with some coal stuck to it'" (http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2015/01/06/Waste-coal-plants-a-poor-fit-with-carbon-emission-rules/stories/201501060014). Westwood Generating is one of 14 waste coal power plants in Pennsylvania that use culm as fuel in an effort to clean up the anthracite region dumps. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article points out that waste coal power plants, employing a fluidized bed system specifically built to burn culm, may not meet new US Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan carbon-dioxide emission standards, but could apply for a legal exemption on the grounds that CO2 produced by burning culm would not be more than emissions from smoldering culm if left in place. In addition, using culm then removes an environmental chemical hazard from the landscape.

So. . . did we move to Scranton? No. My parents decided (or maybe my mother made the final decision) to move back to our old neighborhood in New Jersey, and my father commuted weekly by car to Scranton. Six months later in February 1962, he got a new job in Chicago, and commuted weekly by plane until the school year ended and we all moved out to join him (only once in several relocations did my parents move us in the middle of the school year). Did all this moving bother me? No. While I do not have a "hometown", I have experienced living in several communities and states, and had a variety of opportunities that I might have missed if I stayed in one place.

"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!