Solid fuel refers to various types of solid material that are used as fuel to produce energy and provide heating, usually released through combustion.
Solid fuels include wood (see wood fuel), charcoal, peat, coal, Hexamine fuel tablets, and pellets made from wood (see wood pellets), corn, wheat, rye and other grains. Solid-fuel rocket technology also uses solid fuel (see solid propellants).
Solid fuels have been used by humanity for many years to create fire. Coal was the fuel source which enabled the industrial revolution, from firing furnaces, to running steam engines. Wood was also extensively used to run steam locomotives. Both peat and coal are still used in electricity generation today.
The use of some solid fuels (e.g. coal) is restricted or prohibited in some urban areas, due to unsafe levels of toxic emissions. The use of other solid fuels such as wood is increasing as heating technology and the availability of good quality fuel improves. In some areas, smokeless coal is often the only solid fuel used. In Ireland, peat briquettes are used as smokeless fuel. They are also used to start a coal fire.
Famous quotes containing the words solid and/or fuel:
“It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The particular source of frustration of women observing their own self-study and measuring their worth as women by the distance they kept from men necessitated that a distance be kept, and so what vindicated them also poured fuel on the furnace of their rage. One delight presumed another dissatisfaction, but their hatefulness confessed to their own lack of power to please. They hated men because they needed husbands, and they loathed the men they chased away for going.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)