Article: Synthesis of chemicals and materials from coal.

As petroleum reserves run out, could coal become the feedstock source for the chemical industry of the 21st century?

The production of fine organic chemicals from coal derivatives has its origins in Britain. In fact, the beginning of the chemicals-from-coal industry can be pinpointed fairly precisely to Easter week, 1856. Working in a home laboratory while on holiday from the Royal College of Chemistry, William Henry Perkin extracted an alcohol-soluble, violet-coloured substance from the tarry mess produced during the oxidation of aniline. Perkin's mauve, though by no means the first synthetic dye, is nevertheless heralded as the first of a line of thousands of dyes, ...

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