Let's figure out how to make coal more competitive!

[Mark Poe]

Partially inspired by this thread: https://www.frozenincarbonite.org/threads/war-on-coal.320/ but really more because I'm kinda fishing for ideas for steampunk and dystopia setting content. The point of this thread is to figure out ways where coal based tech could have advanced further than it did in our world/timeline/whatever.

So, to start, This thingy: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/11/13/the-nazi-aircraft-fueled-by-coal/

A coal powered ramjet fighter. The coal powered ramjet engine part, if actually possible in a worthwhile form, could also be utilized to be the basis of antiship missiles (especially as ramjets need to be at a certain speed to activate).

So, other thoughts?

 

[Aaron Fox]

It's impossible, coal is useless outside of making more oil via coal liquidification, and oil is mostly going to be used to create petrochemical products anyway since LNG is going to be replacing oil-fired plants in the near future. The energy efficiency isn't there.

 

[Yesman]

Coal fights
Kinda like snowballs fights except with lumps of coal instead of snowballs and instead of injuries, you risk getting black lung disease.

 

[Lordvile]

Turn it into fertilizer for plants.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Turn it into fertilizer for plants.

That would require coal liquidification... as oil is a major component in modern fertilizers.

 

[Lordvile]

That would require coal liquidification... as oil is a major component in modern fertilizers.

It's mostly as a heat source and precursor hydrocarbons.
Solar concentrators and electric power can help liquidate coal.

 

[Eliar]

Perhaps in the future where space colonization is a thing coal and oil plants will be the go to option for planets in dire need of carbon emissions and a good ol greenhouse effect?

I remember an old sf story about an alien planet slowly losing atmo and falling in an ice age and coal n oil plants were a proposed part of the fix.