Coal: Illinois' forgotten resource

With the summer news focused on rising energy costs, Illinois's most abundant natural resource - coal - deserves some attention of its own.

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black rock formed from the remains of plant materials that grew 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period.

The newest exhibit at the Jurica Nature Museum at Benedictine University highlights coal, how it is mined, used and formed. Vern Chindlund of Design Source and Associates in Glen Ellyn created the display.

Coal is an affordable, reliable and secure fuel.

"In the '40s a great many houses were burning coal for heat here in the Midwest," Chindlund said. "Big trucks would bring coal to the home and dump it into a coal shoot to the bin. It meant getting up in the middle of the night to feed these big octopus-like furnaces with coal."

"In the 1940s and '50s almost all big institutions and factories used coal energy for heating," said museum curator Father Ted Suchy.

Benedictine University was no exception. The boilers on campus were stoked with coal for heating buildings and making steam to turn turbines that generated electricity.

The coal was stored in the coal bin, the oldest building on the Lisle campus, which recently was converted into "Coal Ben" as a gathering spot for students.

"Fathers Edmund and Hilary Jurica collected a number of pre-coal fossils from the companies that sold the Benedictines the coal years ago," Suchy said. "One of the stumps was in especially good condition, and we felt that is should be displayed along with some of the other fossils the Juricas collected."

One of these fossils displayed in a glass case is the rare stump of a Sigillaria tree from the Pennsylvania Period that had seven double roots. In the exhibit, an eye-catching colorful stack 10-feet high illustrates how it takes 10 cubic feet of peat to condense into 1 cubic foot of coal. With the help of water, pressure and heat, coal takes millions of years to form.

Coal is mined in different ways by using a surface method of removing a mountain top or burrowing to reach coal beds deep beneath the ground.

In the early 1800s in Illinois, coal was mined from the bluffs of the Mississippi and sent down the river to New Orleans. With the advantage of rail and barge shipping access, widespread underground mining took place in Illinois in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to Richard Joyce in "The Illinois Labor History Society."

Today, the Illinois coal industry has a widespread impact throughout the state.

Illinois's bituminous coal resource is estimated to be a 250-year supply and the largest of its kind in the United States, according to Bill Hoback, who spent 20 years as an underground coal miner in the state and now is the director of the Office of Coal Development in the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

Bituminous coal is an excellent sulfur coal with a higher BTU, or British Thermal Units count, than oil.

"If you were to measure using BTUs the energy content in the coal underneath the state of Illinois, and all the known oil in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, there is more BTUs under our soil than in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined," Hoback said. "When you think of future energy, there is a huge resource here in Illinois."

"I had no idea of the size of Illinois coal industry before creating this exhibit," Chindlund said. "Forty-six percent of the electricity in Illinois comes from coal."

"It is amazing the resources we have in Illinois," Hoback said.

Every day 39,600 tons of coal pass through the DuPage County area on trains. A modern aluminum coal car can carry as much as 100 tons.

"There is tremendous potential in coal," Chindlund said. "There are a couple thousand products that come from coal, such as plastics and cosmetics."

Some projects Hoback's department is involved in include gasification, making substitute natural gas and turning coal into liquids such as diesel or jet fuel.

"It is expensive technology," Hoback said. "Our game plan in the state of Illinois is to maximize all of our natural resources including solar and wind."

Organizers of the exhibit at Benedictine hope to draw attention to all aspects of coal and change perceptions of coal and its use. Clean coal technology can reduce unwanted emissions.

"We are living in a plentiful time, but we must rethink what we are doing with our natural resources," Chindlund said. "Maybe we can get some scientists out of the young people that see this exhibit and this natural material that already has a fabulous history will fire an imagination."

The coal exhibit is to the right of the museum entrance and may be viewed any time the building is open. The Jurica Museum, which houses fascinating animal, insect and aquatic specimens, is open 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this month and closed in August. In September, the hours extend to 1 to 5 p.m. weekdays and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated. For information, visit ben.edu/museum or call (630) 829-6546.

"We hope the exhibit gets people excited to ask more questions," said Mary Mickus, education coordinator at the museum.