fossil fuels

 Fossil fuels

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Some the fuels which we use in our daily life are: coal, petroleum and natural gas. These were formed from the dead remains of living organism (fossils) that is why these are all known as fossil fuels.

What is Petroleum?

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Petroleum is a dark oily substance, it has an unpleasant smell. It is a mixture of various constituents such as petroleum gas, petrol, diesel etc. The world’s first deposit of petroleum was drilled in Pennsylvania, USA in 1859. After in India the first deposit of Petroleum was founded at Makum in Assam in year 1866-67. In India Petroleum is found in Gujarat, Assam, Mumbai High, and river basins of Krishna and Godavari.

How was Petroleum formed?

Petroleum was formed from the dead matter of organisms living in the sea (aquatic animals and plants, microorganisms too.) got settled down at the bottom of the sea and clay. Over millions of years in absence of air, high pressure and high temperature transformed the dead matter of them into the Petroleum.                                                                          

Why it is so expensive?

Petroleum is one of the expensive liquid and thing on the earth. Many costly things are prepared from it some of them are in liquid form and some are in gaseous form such as petrol, Petroleum gas, natural gas, diesel, lubricating oils, paraffin wax, polythene, fibers (nylon, rayon, acrylic), detergents and hydrogen produced by the help of natural gas is used in manufacturing of fertilizers (one of the fertilizers is urea). Due to its great commercial importance, it is called the “black gold”.

Coal                                                                     

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Coal is as hard as stone and black in color. Earlier, it is used as a fuel to cook food and it was also used to run train engines to run steam engines by the help of steam produced from heat of burning coal. Now-a-days it is used in thermal power plants to produce electricity and also used in many types of industries.

How coal was formed?

About 300 million year ago the earth had dense forest in the low lying wetland areas, and got buried under the soil due to natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods and storms. These got compressed as much and lots of soil got deposited over them. When they got buried deep on the soil, they were exposed to extreme pressure and temperature. Under these conditions, these slowly got converted into coal. As coal contains mainly carbon, this very time-consuming process of converting of dead remains into coal is called Carboniation.