Archives West Finding Aid

Fuels Engineering has had a complex history because fuel science combines chemistry, mining, geology and material science. It began in 1948 as the Department of Fuels Technology in the State College of Mining and Mineral Industries, one of four departments within the Materials Science Division of the college. The college's reorganization in 1972 merged several departments to form the Department of Mining, Metallurgical and Fuels Engineering. In 1978 the college was divided into the Department of Mining and Fuels Engineering and the Department of Metallurgy. This was followed four years later with Fuels Engineering returning as an independent department. It was concerned with the extraction, chemical make-up and processing of fossil fuels, especially coal. A significant number of documents in this collection are concerned with the Tar Sands Project, a series of research projects attempting to economically convert Utah's bituminous sands into fuel, particularly through the novel process called "hydropyrolysis." Such research was variously funded by petroleum corporations and the U.S. Department of Energy. Eventually, in 1992, the department was merged with Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering, which continues research in fuels science.