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COAL

Coal is a mineral that was formed from prehistoric plant remains, mainly arborescent ferns. Those remains buried by the mud and under the effects of heat, pressure and lack of oxygen, took the mineral structure they present today.

The importance of coal lies in its energetic power as a fuel and in the fact that it constitutes the fundamental raw material in the elaboration of countless articles. The first steam engines, such as ships, trains and industrial machinery moved thanks to the energy it supplied to this material. Later it was displaced by oil; nevertheless, nowadays the coal seems to recover its privileged position, since this is raw material for the elaboration of plastic, dyes, perfumes and oils.

About 300 million years ago, a large part of the mineral coal that exists on our planet was formed. This happened in the Upper Paleozoic, in the period called Carboniferous, although also during the Permian, Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, Pleocene and Miocene periods large coal deposits were formed.

It was not until the time of Queen Elizabeth I when this fuel began to be widely used in English cities, taken from the mines of Newcastle and Cardiff. Coal became more important when Abraham Darby discovered the process that allows coke to be obtained from coal.

The uses of these mineral coals are focused on the production of electrical energy, often used as fuel in the production of thermal energy in furnaces or heaters, although this application has fallen into disuse due to the development of petroleum derived fuels.