Sixteen ton and no longer deeper in debt

By Don ‘Doc’ Sanders

For you old codgers like me, remember the Sixteen-Ton song written by Merle Travis in the mid-1940s? It did not really hit the music market until Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded his version of it in 1955. The FBI in the ‘40s quietly told radio stations not to play the song, effectively banning it as being subversive because it described the subjugation of coal miners, which, in fact, was happening. Coal miners worked in dangerous mine conditions, breathing coal dust all day. This is where the medical condition termed black lung disease originated.

Miners were in isolated locations, and their only sources of food, basic living supplies, and fuel were available from the company commissary. The commissary prices were often very high, forcing coal miners to live in little more than subservient conditions, too poor to escape, and without basic medical care. My wife, Jaye, was born in a Kentucky coal-mining camp. She can describe some really horrid conditions that her father and grandfather worked in while in the mines.

When Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded the song in 1955, two million copies were sold in a very short time. I confess it was also a favorite for my brothers and I as we grew up, not mining coal but on a general livestock and dairy farm. Don’t get the idea that we lived in squalid conditions. Our parents instilled in us the importance of working hard, but also of smelling the roses along the way.

While I love reminiscing about the good old days, my story today is about the new days that are here for coal. Readers likely visualize coal trains today hauling coal to power plants that use it as their main energy source. I was in Pittsburgh recently at a veterinary conference and, throughout several days, observed trains pulling loaded coal cars right through downtown, adjacent to our hotel. They were close enough that I could have jumped out of my fourth-floor window right onto a loaded coal car. No, I did not have anything to drink.

There is a new, exciting frontier for coal beyond being a fuel for power plants. Just one lump of coal is far more than a heat energy source. It has been dissected (a veterinary term from this old veterinarian) into its individual chemical compounds.

Frontières North America (FNA) has developed a patented process to separate coal into its basic chemical components. They can pull diesel fuel, jet fuel, naphtha, sulfuric acid, FASCForm^TM, and ammonium sulfate fertilizer out of each lump of coal. I write about a lump of coal (as in a Christmas gift), but this industry recently started using tons of coal split into these other energy and chemical forms. This is not just a new age of artificial intelligence but a new industrial age!

One lump of coal can be separated by a Solid Carbon Fractionation process into these six components for different markets. It is projected that these components, when separated and extracted, will generate over two trillion dollars annually. FSA predicts they have enough commitments for orders to last for the next 10 years.

FNA has now established its corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas. There is no coal in Houston, but at least they will be rubbing elbows with other big energy-sourced players. Houston is considered the corporate capital for energy companies in this country.

In a previous column (Mid-July Ohio’s Country Journal). I described converting cow manure into jet and rocket fuel for the aerospace industries. Frankly, I am betting the cows will give these energy coal giants a run (not diarrhea) for their money.

Coal must be mined or strip-mined to extract these products. Cow manure, however, is plentiful and available from livestock and dairy farms across the United States.