Christmas And Coal
It’s not just black lumps in christmas stockings
Coal Bin article by Harold Hough  

            Talk about Christmas and coal and you naturally think of bad kids getting a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking.  However, there is a lot of coal to be found around the holidays and you might find some coal (in a different form) under your Christmas tree.
            If gift giving patterns hold, many of us will get our coal in the form of perfume, cologne, or aftershave.  But, what most people don’t realize is that coal products are critical for nearly every part of their manufacturing process.
            Although perfume production goes back about 5,000 years, new technology has revolutionized the industry.  Customers’ noses are becoming jaded and Channel No. 5 isn’t enough anymore.  The current fad is for new and more realistic scents.  This is where coal steps in.
            Traditional perfume making relied on distillation.  Flowers, fruits, or certain woods would have steam passed through them to produce the essential oil.  However, while carrying away some scents, the hot steam would destroy other subtle aromas.
            One way to get around this is with solvent extraction.  The flowers, roots, or bark are submerged for hours or weeks in a vat of dimethyl ether, which is produced via coal gasification into synthetic gas.  Once the essential oils are dissolved, the fluid is drawn off and distilled at a much lower temperature.
            Since these solvents can sometimes modify the scent, a new method has been invented called supercritical fluid extraction, which uses supercritical CO2.  Supercritical CO2 has properties much like a fluid and gas.  At the right temperature and pressure it is an ideal solvent that is able to extract essential oils from the plants.   And, unlike other solvents, distillation isn’t needed because the carbon dioxide just vaporizes into a gas at the end of the process.  And, much of the carbon dioxide used today comes from the coal industry.
            Coal is also responsible for many of the fragrances we detect in perfume.  Some like synthetic musk makes a normally rare scent more available to perfumers.  Synthetic musks also have a clean, smooth and sweet scent lacking the fecal notes of natural musks and sometimes have notes of blackberry.  Ironically, the first synthetic musk was created by the scientist Albert Baur, who was trying to make more powerful TNT.   Apparently, the smell of TNT depends on the symmetry of the three nitro group.  Toluene, the base chemical for TNT, comes from coal tar.
            Another synthetic scent that comes from coal is orchid fragrance.  It also comes from coal tar and its chemical structure is similar to aspirin.
Coal technology has also created new scents too.  One relatively new scent that owes its existence to coal is methylbenzodioxepinone, (trade-named Calone).  It has a “sea breeze” smell and is the basis of the many seashore and sea breeze scents, popular today.  Some examples are Ralph Lauren’s Polo Sport Women and Escape by Calvin Klein.
But, coal isn’t limited to gifts.  Much of the glitter of Christmas is also due to coal, thanks to Mylar.  Mylar is used for Christmas tinsel, gift wrapping, and holiday balloons. Mylar comes from BoPET (Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate), which is a polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate.  A vapor deposition layer of aluminum gives it its silvery glitter.  Several of Mylar’s feedstocks can come from coal as well as petroleum.
Finally, what is Christmas without crafts – from children’s projects to decorations for church plays, to centerpieces for Christmas dinner?  And a key ingredient for all of them is rubber cement.  Rubber cements are designed to peel easily or rub off without damaging the object or leaving a trace of the glue behind (ideal for children’s projects).  They are made of a rubber compound like latex and a solvent like toluene.  And, toluene is one of the basic compounds of coal tar.
So, settle back this Christmas and enjoy yourself.  You probably will not get a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking, but a lot of the things you will enjoy will come from coal.