Louis-Joseph Proust y los primeros análisis de carbones asturianosCrónica de unos ensayos químicos olvidados en la historia minero-industrial de Asturias

Abstract

Mining historiography has considered that the first chemical tests of Asturian coal were carried out in the early 1840s by the English chemist Thomas Cooper and the French engineer Adrien Paillette, and were of low scientific quality and the result of the urgency of the economic and business interests of the moment. For his part, Jovellanos reported that after the creation of the Trubia Munitions Factory, Louis-Joseph Proust had participated in the tests carried out in his smelting furnaces, without further investigation on this matter. It was not until 1986 that Luis Adaro Ruíz-Falcó published a document that refers the shipment of Langreo coal to the laboratory of the Artillery School of Segovia, to be analyzed by Proust and to study the possibility of using them as fuel to obtain quality iron in the Trubia furnaces, although he regretted not having located the results of the same. The digitization of a large number of scientific publications and magazines from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has allowed us to find two completely forgotten texts of Proust in which he describes the different Asturian coal analyzed, as well as the results obtained, comparing them with others of English origin and from various parts of Spain (Bélmez, Extremadura and Villanueva del Río). We consider that making these important documents known and integrating them in the context of the time period in which they were produced, constitutes a significant contribution to the industrial-mining history of Asturias.