![]() ![]() In certain exceptional circumstances, the organic matter may be buried in sediment and preserved, albeit in a modified site, in coal, oil and gas, by a complex process of chemistry. Plants and animals die and their organic matters are oxidized into carbon and water. This process happens within plants or within animals, which eat the plants. The key reaction is the conversion of inorganic carbon into hydrocarbon by photosynthesis. Junge, “Evolution des irdischen Sauerstof Budgets und Entwicklung de Erdatmosphare,” Umschau., 22, 1974, pp. About 18% occurs as organic carbon in coal, oil and gas (M. ![]() Some 82% of this carbon is located as CO3 in limestone and dolomite (Ca CO3 and Mg CO3). The Organic theory, which has far more supporters, states that the amount of carbon in the earth crust has been estimated to weigh 2.6 times 10 to the power of 28 grams (Hunt, 1977, pp. This iron carbide could react with percolating water and form methane and other hydrocarbons that is analogous to production of acetylene from reaction of calcium carbide and water. 552) suggested that the mantle contained iron carbide. The Inorganic theory, which has some supporters (amongst chemists and astronomers rather than geologist), believes in magmatic origin of petroleum. There are two theories for the origin of petroleum: Inorganic and Organic. To day, the world is highly dependent on petroleum for motive power, lubrication, fuel, synthetics, dyes, solvents, and pharmaceuticals (Yergin, p. Little use other than lamp fuel was made of petroleum until the development of internal combustion engines (automobiles and airplanes). Many wells were then drilled in the region, and kerosene, the chief product, soon replaced whale oil lamps and tallow candles. Drake and his team built a derrick and assembled the necessary equipment to drill a well that, towards the end of August 1859, struck oil at the depth of 69 feet. Drake, hired by the same group of promoters, set up operations about two miles down Oil Creek from Titusville in Pennsylvania on a farm that contained an oil spring. The modern petroleum industry began in 1859, when “Colonel” Edwin L. Although others in Britain and Canada had already produced clean burning lamp fuel from rock oil, it was the publication of Silliman’s report that provided the impetus to the search for crude oil in the deeper strata of the earth’s surface. One of the fractions was a very high quality illuminating oil. In his research report to the group, Silliman wrote that the petroleum sample (collected by skimming the seepages on streams) could be brought to various levels of boiling and thus distilled into several fractions, all composed of carbon and hydrogen. In 1854, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., the son of the great American chemist and himself a distinguished professor of chemistry at Yale University, took an outside research project given by a group of promoters headed by George Bissel, a New York lawyer and James Townsend, president of a Bank in New Haven, Connecticut, to analyze the properties of the rock oil and to see if it could be used as an illuminant (Yergin, p. Some believed that rock oil from surface seepages would be a suitable raw material for good quality illuminating oil. Moreover, due to the social changes, people in the industrial countries wished to be able to work and read after dark and, therefore, needed cheap oil for lamps to replace the expensive whale oil or the malodorous tallow candles. ![]() By the middle of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution had brought about a search for new fuels in order to power the wheels of industry. It was used in mortar, for coating walls and boat hulls, and as a fire weapon in defensive warfare. Petroleum has been known throughout historical time. ![]()
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