Talk:Coal oil

Coal oil
coal oil also comes from underground coal gasification.

Kerosene
I could not find refs at Google Book Search which substantiated a separate product "coal oil" made from coal. The overwhelming number of references are as the popular name for kerosene in North America from the late 19th century on. See, , , , and. Whay quantity of "coal oil" made from coal as described was ever sold compared to the volume of kerosene sold as "coal oil," and how many print references described the subject of this article as opposed to kerosene ("paraffin" in UK)? There is no mention of "coal oil" in Shale oil extraction, in Shale oil, or in Cannel coal. The medical references in this article refer to kerosene, and not some earlier "coal oil" different from kerosene, so I will remove them as not related to this subject. References seem to show that an illuminating oil was obtained from the distillation of coal and from the distillation of petroleum, and it is hard to see the difference (not being a chemist). A historic ref I found from 1865  and doesn't seem to distinguish the "coal oil" distilled from cannel coal from the kerosene distilled from fluid petroleum. Harpers from 1875 page 86 discusses the history of coal oil and says that illuminating oil was distilled from cannel coal starting 1850, but was sold in the US "with the trade name of kerosene, or simply as coal oil." It says that by about 1860, coal was no longer distilled to produce coal oil or kerosene. The product is indicated to be the same, but from a different raw material. Edison (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)