Oil and Coal Do NOT Require Millions of Years to Form

(Picture credit www.changingworldtech.com)
Evolutionists and other various Deep Time advocates believe that oil and coal require millions of years to form … but they don’t. They just require the right conditions. Consider the following recent article …

Nuclear microprobe analysis of artificial coal

Alan M. Bailey, William A. Hollerman, Rudolph Gibbs, Arthur D. Cohen, Gary A. Glass, Shelly F. Hynes, Justin Fournet and Richard Greco

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, Volume 189, Issues 1-4, April 2002, Pages 418-420
Department of Geology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette – 70504-4530, Lafayette, LA, USA, Acadiana Research Laboratory, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P.O. Box 44210, Lafayette, LA 70504-4210, USA, Department of Geological Sciences, University of South Carolina – 29208, Columbia SC, USA

Abstract
An artificially coalified Taxodium peat was used to examine the behavior of inorganic constituents in terrestrial organic matter during the early coalification process. The artificial coal is produced by subjecting the peat to incremental increases in temperature up to 60 °C and pressures to 14.48 MPa over a four-week period in a partially open reactor.

4 weeks, folks. That’s all it takes given the right conditions. Lest my evolutionist friends misunderstand, this does not prove that coal actually did form rapidly, such as during Noah’s Flood. It just shows that it could have … and that it probably did, given the fact that we don’t have a plausible explanation for how coal or oil could have formed over millions of years.

How about oil?

Well … just like coal, oil can be formed artificially in just a very short time. A fairly new company called Changing World Technologies is doing just that. This company was pointed out to me by the good folks at Answers in Genesis and I recently had a lively debate with some of my evolutionist friends about their artificial oil products. You can read about how this company essentially duplicates the natural crude oil production process that occurs in the crust of the earth by applying heat and pressure to some type of organic feedstock–they use turkey guts primarily. We spent a fair amount of time debating whether or not the oil produced is the same as natural crude oil. At one point, I called the factory and spoke to an engineer. He told me that the feedstock they use–turkey guts–is essentially the same chemically as the natural feedstock–algae and zooplankton–which scientists believe eventually became crude oil in the crust of the earth. So my conclusions were that, when we compare the artificial oil-producing process to the natural oil producing process, we find that …

1) The feedstocks are virtually the same chemically
2) The process is virtually the same — heat + pressure
3) The end products are the same — gasoline, diesel, fertilizer, etc.

Conclusion? Oil, like coal, does not require millions of years to form. It just takes the right conditions.

Here’s an excerpt from the Discover article which broke the story on the company …

The first thing a visitor sees when he steps into the loading bay is a fat pressurized pipe, which pushes the guts from the receiving hopper into a brawny grinder that chews them into pea-size bits. Dry feedstocks like tires and plastics need additional water at this stage, but offal is wet enough. A first-stage reactor breaks down the stuff with heat and pressure, after which the pressure rapidly drops, flashing off excess water and minerals. In turkeys, the minerals come mostly from bones, and these are shunted to a storage bin to be sold later as a high-calcium powdered fertilizer.

The remaining concentrated organic soup then pours into a second reaction tank—Appel says the two-stage nature of the process distinguishes it from dozens of failed single-stage waste-to-oil schemes devised over the last century—where it is heated to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressurized to 600 pounds per square inch. In 20 minutes, the process replicates what the deep earth does to dead plants and animals over centuries, chopping long, complex molecular chains of hydrogen and carbon into short-chain molecules. Next, the pressure and temperature drop, and the soup swirls through a centrifuge that separates any remaining water from the oil. The water, which in the case of slaughterhouse waste is laden with nitrogen and amino acids, is stored to be sold as a potent liquid fertilizer (see “Garden Delights,” next page). Meanwhile, the oil goes to the storage tank to await the next truck. The whole process is efficient, says Terry Adams, the company’s chief technology officer: Only 15 percent of the potential energy in the feedstock is used to power the operation; 85 percent is embodied in the output of oil and other products.

The oil itself meets specification D396, a type widely used to power electrical utility generators. The oil can be sold to utilities as is, further distilled into vehicle-grade diesel and gasoline, or, via a steam process, made into hydrogen. Until last year, Appel distilled his output on-site, but he has since decided to sell the oil directly to utilities and refineries. “We just don’t make enough volume to make operating our own refinery viable,” he says.
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

You can read the debate with my evolutionist friends HERE.

One Response to “Oil and Coal Do NOT Require Millions of Years to Form”

  1. lordkalvan says:

    I note that one of the participants at the internet debate you link to also contacted CWT as there was some uncertainty concerning the details of your own conversation with the engineer you refer to. The response from the CWT spokesperson, available in full at http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=50845&postcount=257, is quoted verbatim here:

    “….you called and emailed us for a technical answer and I will give that to you outside of the context of your forum group: our renewable diesel fuel meets the ASTM specifications outlined in the forum (D-396 and D-975) and is not chemically identical to crude oil.”

    This is at some variance with the conclusion you draw from your reported conversation:

    ‘……that, when we compare the artificial oil-producing process to the natural oil producing process, we find that …

    1) The feedstocks are virtually the same chemically
    2) The process is virtually the same — heat + pressure
    3) The end products are the same — gasoline, diesel, fertilizer, etc.

    Conclusion? Oil, like coal, does not require millions of years to form. It just takes the right conditions.’

    It is also the case that, simply because something that you categorize as oil (or coal) can be produced artificially under artificial conditions, this is not evidence that the same process (or even a similar process) is responsible for producing petroleum (or coal) naturally.

    You should also note that naturally occurring petroleum is scarcely ‘the same’ as the renewable diesel fuel produced by CWT and the claim that it is is dubious at best. During World War II the Germans produced synthetic fuel-oil from coal; are you suggesting that naturally occurring petroleum is produced from naturally occurring coal? I think not.

    If you wish to claim that petroleum can be produced naturally in the periods of time you suggest under a ‘young’ Earth paradigm, you need to produce evidence other than speculation of that process occurring in nature. I doubt that anyone will argue with you that SOME type of fuel-oil can be produced artificially in much less time than occurs in nature (it has been done many times, after all), but the evidence indicates that the processes are entirely dissimilar; it is your responsibility to provide substance (i.e. evidence) to support any claim that the current understanding of geologists concerning the process of petroleum forming and pooling in nature is as wrong as you are seeking to imply it is in this article.