What are the three major fossil fuels?

The three main fossil fuels are coal, oil and natural gas.

Coal: Coal is a solid combustible mineral gradually formed by ancient plants buried underground through complex biochemical and physical-chemical changes.

Petroleum: Petroleum is one of the main targets of geological exploration. It is a viscous dark brown liquid, which is called "industrial blood". There are oil reserves in some parts of the upper crust. The main components are mixtures of alkanes, cycloalkanes and aromatic hydrocarbons.

There are two theories about the mechanism of petroleum formation: biological deposition and petrochemical formation. The former is widely accepted that oil is formed by the long evolution of organisms in ancient oceans or lakes, which belongs to biological deposition and cannot be regenerated. The latter thinks that oil is generated by carbon in the earth's crust, which has nothing to do with living things and is renewable. Petroleum is mainly used as fuel oil and gasoline, and it is also the raw material of many chemical industrial products, such as solutions, fertilizers, pesticides and plastics.

The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians developed and utilized oil a long time ago. The Chinese name "Petroleum" was first named by Shen Kuo, a great scientist in the Northern Song Dynasty.

Natural gas: Natural gas refers to all natural gas, including gases formed by various natural processes in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere (including oilfield gas, gas field gas, mud volcano gas, coalbed methane and biogas, etc. ).

The commonly used definition of "natural gas" for a long time is a narrow definition from the perspective of energy, which refers to the mixture of hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon gases naturally contained in the stratum. In petroleum geology, it usually refers to oilfield gas and gas field gas. Its composition is mainly hydrocarbons and contains non-hydrocarbon gases.