The first edition of the book Coal: Typology - Chemistry - Physics - Constitution appeared in 1961. In 1981 a new edition was published in which the text was unaltered proving that after 20 years the book was still considered a standard work in its field. The enormous activities in the 80's in the field of coal conversion processes (especially gasification and
liquefaction) and the equally amazing development of instrumental techniques of observation and analysis prompted a complete revision and update of the book. The present edition contains 1000 pages compared to the 514 pages of its predecessors of 1961 and 1981. The number of illustrations has greatly increased from 253 to 574 and that of the tables from 76 to 208. These figures amply testify to the increase in coal research.
Compared with its former editions, the present book treats a considerable number of new subjects: modern concepts of geotectonics and of organic geochemistry; the problem of pseudohomogeneity of vitrinite; developments of the classification and systematics of coals and coal components (macerals); an exposé on electron microscopy and the most important instrumental physical methods of analysis (FTIR, NMR, ESCA and analytical pyrolysis combined with gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy); the principles of physical-statistical structure analysis based on the concept of additivity of a large number of molar functions; a revision of Seyler's ideas of discrete steps in coalification; an essay on coal fluorescence; and the survey on magnetic properties - magnetic susceptibility and magnetic resonance - is considerably enlarged. A completely new chapter is added on cohesion and adhesion phenomena as found in coals. The chapter on solvent extraction and solubilisation is
significantly enlarged and new concepts are discussed. The actions of hydrogen, molecular oxygen and oxidising agents on coal are updated and a newly written chapter treats the grand processes of coal conversion (combustion, gasification, carbonisation and liquefaction). Coal constitution in its diverse aspects is revised with a practically complete survey of many proposed coal models. Essays on synthetic coal analogues and on the simulation of natural coalification are added. Also new is the compendium, a set of comprehensive tables, containing the most important numerical data of this book in a fully
comparative form.
Every chapter has its own bibliography, divided into general references (leading books on the treated subject) and special references, which are quotations of scientific papers discussed in the text. The extensive subject index, complete index of names and the compendium are provided in order to facilitate usage as an encyclopedic work.