History
The earliest recorded mention of the idea of underground coal gasification was in 1868, when Sir William Siemens in his address to the Chemical Society of London suggested the underground gasification of waste and slack coal in the mine. Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev further developed Siemens' idea over the next couple of decades.
In 1909–1910, American, Canadian, and British patents were granted to American engineer Anson G. Betts for "a method of using unmined coal". The first experimental work on UCG was planned to start in 1912 in Durham, the United Kingdom, under the leadership of Nobel Prize winner Sir William Ramsay. However, he was unable to commence the UCG field work before the beginning of the World War I, and the project was abandoned.
Read more about this topic: Underground Coal Gasification
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