Young, James
James Young was a Scottish inventor who first extracted paraffin from oil-rich shales and coals. He went on to set up a successful industry based on these principles. In 1848, he established an oil refinery at Alfreton, Derbyshire. Then, in 1850, he patented a process for extracting oil from cannel coal. Beginning in 1851, he established refineries in the Lothians, processing cannel-coal and oil shale years before the first American or Middle Eastern oil well was drilled. His patent, in which cannel coal was heated to a specified temperature within an enclosed vessel or "retort" in order to release an oil vapor, was the forerunner of modern oil shale conversion technologies.
Sources
- Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author); Peter Saundry (Topic Editor). 2008. "Young, James." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth January 3, 2007; Last revised November 14, 2008; Retrieved October 25, 2009]. <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Young,_James>
Terms of Use:
This article uses material from the Encyclopedia of Earth. The Author(s) and Editor(s) listed with this article may have significantly modified the content derived from the Encyclopedia of Earth with original content or with content drawn from other sources. The current version of the cited Encyclopedia of Earth article may differ from the version that existed on the date of access. Text in this article available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/