Page 39 - Synthetic Fuels Handbook

CHAPTER 2

NATURAL GAS

Natural gas (also called marsh gas or swamp gas in older texts and more recently landfill
gas) is a naturally occurring gaseous fossil fuel that is found in oil fields and natural gas
fields, and in coalbeds.
For clarification, natural gas is not the same as town gas, which is manufactured from
coal and the terms coal gas, manufactured gas, producer gas, and syngas (synthetic natural
gas, SNG) are also used for gas produced from coal. Depending on the production pro-
cess, gas from coal is a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, and volatile
hydrocarbons in varying amounts with small amounts of carbon dioxide and nitrogen as
impurities.
Prior to the development of resources, virtually all fuel and lighting gas was manufac-
tured from coal and the history of natural gas cleaning has its roots in town gas cleaning
(Chap. 5). The by-product coal tar produced during the manufacture of gas from coal was
an important feedstock for the chemical industry. The development of manufactured gas
paralleled that of the industrial revolution and urbanization.

2.1 HISTORY

The uses of natural gas did not necessarily parallel its discovery. In fact, the discovery
of natural gas dates from ancient times in the Middle East. During recorded historical
time, there was little or no understanding of what natural gas was; it posed somewhat of a
mystery to man. Sometimes, such things as lightning strikes would ignite natural gas that
was escaping from under the earth’s crust. This would create a fire coming from the earth,
burning the natural gas as it seeped out from underground. These fires puzzled most early
civilizations, and were the root of much myth and superstition. One of the most famous
of these types of flames was found in ancient Greece, on Mount Parnassus approximately
1000 B.C. A goat herdsman came across what looked like a burning spring, a flame rising
from a fissure in the rock. The Greeks, believing it to be of divine origin, built a temple on
the flame. This temple housed a priestess who was known as the Oracle of Delphi, giving
out prophecies she claimed were inspired by the flame.
These types of springs became prominent in the religions of India, Greece, and Persia.
Unable to explain where these fires came from, they were often regarded as divine, or
supernatural. However the energy value of natural gas was not recognized until approxi-
mately 900 B.C. in China and the Chinese drilled the first known natural gas well in
211 B.C. The Chinese formed crude pipelines out of bamboo shoots to transport the gas,
where it was used to boil sea water, for separating the salt and making it drinkable.
Natural gas was discovered and identified in America as early as 1626, when French
explorers discovered natives igniting gases that were seeping into and around Lake Erie.
However, Britain was the first country to commercialize the use of natural gas. Around
1785, natural gas produced from coal was used to light houses, as well as streetlights.

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