History of applied coal petrology in the United States: I. Early history of the application of coal petrography in the steel industry

Abstract

In May of 1992, a seminar entitled “An Oral History of Applied Coal Petrography and the Triangle Run” was held at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, for the purpose of recording the personal accounts of four of the principal scientists involved in the initial application of coal petrology to the manufacture of metallurgical coke and subsequent developments. The four scientists included William F. Berry, Ralph J. Gray, William Spackman, and Richard R. Thompson. Under the direction of Dr. William Spackman, founder of the Coal Research Section at The Pennsylvania State University, innovative fundamental studies of the properties and thermal behavior of coal and coal macerals resulted in the development of integrated coal and coke research programs and laboratories at US steel companies. These studies also stimulated the beginnings of a series of fruitful collaborations between industry and universities. Unique among these cooperative efforts was the free exchange of information that took place over a period of 25 years when scores of people interested in the practical applications of coal petrology traveled to confer with researchers and technicians at US Steel, Bethlehem Steel, and the Coal Research Section (the “triangle run”). Prof. Spackman's students, as well as students of other universities, became the developers and managers of company-specific petrographic classification and prediction systems used to control the quality of metallurgical coke and to formulate coking blends. These systems allowing each company to evaluate and utilize their own or other available coals are still in use today.