Coal is a sedimentary rock that forms in the earth's seam. Coal is an excellent fuel. It is believed that this is the most ancient type of fuel used by our distant ancestors.
How bituminous coal is formed
A huge amount of plant matter is needed to form coal. And it is better if the plants accumulate in one place and do not have time to decompose completely. Perfect place for this - swamps. The water in them is poor in oxygen, which interferes with the vital activity of bacteria.
Vegetation accumulates in the swamps. Not having time to completely rot, it is compressed by the following soil deposits. This is how peat turns out - raw material for coal. The next layers of soil, as it were, seal the peat in the ground. As a result, it is completely deprived of oxygen and water access and turns into a coal seam. This process is lengthy. So, most of the modern reserves of coal were formed in the Paleozoic era, that is, more than 300 million years ago.
Characteristics and types of coal
(Brown coal)
The chemical composition of coal depends on its age.
The youngest species is brown coal. It lies at a depth of about 1 km. There is still a lot of water in it - about 43%. Contains a large amount of volatile substances. It ignites well and burns, but gives little heat.
Coal is a kind of "middle peasant" in this classification. It occurs at depths of up to 3 km. Since the pressure of the upper layers is higher, the water content in coal is less - about 12%, volatiles - up to 32%, but carbon contains from 75% to 95%. It is also highly flammable but burns better. And due to the small amount of moisture, it gives more heat.
Anthracite- an older breed. It occurs at a depth of about 5 km. It has more carbon and virtually no moisture. Anthracite is a solid fuel, it is poorly flammable, but the specific heat of combustion is the highest - up to 7400 kcal / kg.
(Coal anthracite)
However, anthracite is not the final stage in the transformation of organic matter. When exposed to more severe conditions, coal is transformed into shuntite. At higher temperatures, graphite is obtained. And under ultra-high pressure, coal turns into diamond. All these substances - from plants to diamonds - are made of carbon, only the molecular structure is different.
In addition to the main "ingredients", various "rocks" are often included in the composition of coal. These are impurities that do not burn, but form a slag. Sulfur is also contained in coal, and its content is determined by the place of coal formation. When burned, it reacts with oxygen to form sulfuric acid. The less impurities in the composition of coal, the higher its grade is valued.
Coal deposit
The place of occurrence of coal is called a coal basin. More than 3.6 thousand coal basins are known in the world. Their area occupies about 15% of the earth's land area. The United States has the largest percentage of the world's coal reserves at 23%, followed by Russia at 13%. China closes the top three with 11%. The largest coal deposits in the world are located in the United States. This is the Appalachian coal basin, whose reserves exceed 1,600 billion tons.
In Russia, the largest coal basin is Kuznetsk, in the Kemerovo region. Kuzbass reserves amount to 640 billion tons.
The development of deposits in Yakutia (Elginskoe) and in Tyva (Elegestskoe) is promising.
Coal mining
Depending on the depth of the coal, either a closed mining method or an open one is used.
Closed or underground mining method. For this method, mine shafts and adits are built. Shafts are built if the depth of coal is 45 meters or more. A horizontal tunnel leads from it - an adit.
There are 2 closed-pit mining systems: chamber-and-pillar mining and longwall mining. The first system is less economical. It is used only in cases where the layers found are thick. The second system is much safer and more practical. It allows you to extract up to 80% of the rock and evenly deliver the coal to the surface.
The open method is used when the coal is shallow. To begin with, an analysis of the hardness of the soil is carried out, the degree of weathering of the soil and the layering of the covering layer are determined. If the soil above the coal seams is soft, use of bulldozers and scrapers is sufficient. If the top layer is thick, then excavators and draglines are brought in. A thick layer of hard rock overlying the coal is blown up.
Application of hard coal
The area of use of coal is simply enormous.
Sulfur, vanadium, germanium, zinc, lead are mined from coal.
Coal itself is an excellent fuel.
It is used in metallurgy for iron smelting, in the production of cast iron, steel.
Ash obtained after burning coal is used in the production of building materials.
After special treatment of coal, benzene and xylene are obtained, which are used in the production of varnishes, paints, solvents, and linoleum.
By liquefying coal, a first-class liquid fuel is obtained.
Coal is a raw material for producing graphite. As well as naphthalene and a number of other aromatic compounds.
As a result of the chemical treatment of coal, over 400 types of industrial products are obtained today.
It takes a long time to turn peat into coal. Peat layers gradually accumulated in peat bogs, and from above it was overgrown with more and more plants. At depth, the complex compounds found in decaying plants break down into increasingly simple ones. They are partially dissolved and carried away by water, and some of them pass into a gaseous state, forming methane and carbon dioxide. Bacteria and various fungi that inhabit all swamps and peat bogs also play an important role in the formation of coal, as they contribute to the rapid decomposition of plant tissues. Over time, in the process of such changes, carbon begins to accumulate in peat, as the most persistent substance. Over time, carbon in peat becomes more and more.
An important condition for the accumulation of carbon in peat is the lack of oxygen access. Otherwise, carbon, combining with oxygen, would turn into carbon dioxide and evaporate. The layers of peat, which are converted into coal, are first isolated from the air and the oxygen contained in it by the water that covers them, and from above by the newly emerging layers of peat from the decaying layer of plants and new thickets growing on them.
Coal stages
The first stage is lignite, a loose brown coal, most similar to peat, not of the most ancient origin. The remains of plants are clearly visible in it, especially wood, since it takes longer to decompose. Lignite forms in modern peat bogs middle lane, and consists of reeds, sedges, peat moss. Wood peat, which forms in a subtropical strip, such as the swamps of Florida in the United States, is very similar to fossil lignite.
Lignite is created when it is more strongly decomposed and altered. plant residues... Its color is black or dark brown, wood remains are less common in it, and there are no plant remains at all, it is stronger than lignite. When burning, brown coal emits much more heat, since there are more carbon compounds in it. Over time, brown coal turns into bituminous coal, but not always. The transformation process only takes place if the brown coal layer sinks into deeper seams. crust when the mountain building process takes place. To turn brown coal into black coal or anthracite, you need a very high temperature of the earth's interior and a lot of pressure.
In coal, the remains of plants and wood can only be found under a microscope, it is shiny, heavy and hard almost like a stone. Black and coal called anthracite contains the largest amount of carbon. This coal is valued above all, as it gives the most heat when burned.
Since ancient times, coal has been a source of energy for mankind, not the only one, but widely used. It is sometimes compared to solar energy stored in stone. It is burned, receiving heat for heating, heating water, at thermal stations converted into electricity, used for smelting metals.
With the development of new technologies, they learned to use coal not only for generating energy by combustion. The chemical industry has successfully mastered the production technologies of rare metals - gallium and germanium. Composite carbon-graphite materials with a high carbon content, gaseous fuel of high calorific value are extracted from it, methods of plastic production have been worked out. The lowest-grade coal, its very fine fraction and coal dust are processed and which are excellent for heating as industrial premises and private houses. In total, more than 400 types of products are produced with the help of chemical processing of coal, which can cost tens of times more than the original product.
For several centuries people have been actively using coal as a fuel for obtaining and transforming energy, with the development of the chemical industry and the need for rare and valuable materials in other industries, the need for coal is increasing. Therefore, exploration of new deposits is being intensively carried out, quarries and mines, enterprises for processing raw materials are being built.
Briefly about the origin of coal
On our planet, many millions of years ago, vegetation developed rapidly in a humid climate. Since then, 210 ... 280 million years have passed. For millennia, millions of years, billions of tons of vegetation died off, accumulated at the bottom of swamps, covered with layers of sediment. Slow decomposition in an oxygen-free atmosphere under a powerful pressure of water, sand, and other rocks, sometimes at high temperatures due to the close location of magma, led to the fossilization of layers of this vegetation, with a gradual degeneration into coal of varying degrees of coalification.
Major Russian deposits and coal mining
The planet has coal reserves of over 15 trillion tons. The largest extraction of minerals falls on coal, about 0.7 tons per person, which is more than 2.6 billion tons per year. In Russia, hard coal is available in different regions... It has different characteristics, features and depth of occurrence. Here are the largest and most successful hard coal basins:
The active use of Siberian and Far Eastern deposits limits their remoteness from industrial European regions. In the western part of Russia, coal is also mined with excellent indicators: in the Pechersk and Donetsk coal basins. V Rostov region they are actively developing local deposits, the most promising of which is Gukovskoye. Processing of coal from these deposits gives coal grades High Quality- anthracites (AC and AO).
The main quality characteristics of coal
Different industries require various brands coal. Its quality indicators vary widely, even among those that have the same marking and largely depend on the field. Therefore, enterprises, before purchasing coal, familiarize themselves with its physical characteristics:
According to the degree of enrichment, coal is divided:
- - Concentrates (burned for heating in steam boilers and receiving electricity);
- - Industrial products used in the metallurgical industry;
- - Sludge, in fact, is a fine fraction (up to 6mm) and dust after crushing the rock. It is problematic to burn such fuel, therefore briquettes with good performance are molded from it and used in household solid fuel boilers.
By the degree of coalification:
- - Lignite is a partially formed bituminous coal. Has a low heat of combustion, crumbles during transportation and storage, has a tendency to spontaneous combustion;
- - Coal. It has many different brands (varieties) with different characteristics. Has a wide area of use: metallurgy, energy, housing and communal services, chemical industry, etc.
- - Anthracite is the highest quality form of coal.
If we compare peat and bituminous coal, the heat of combustion of coal is higher. The lowest heat of combustion is for brown coal, the highest for anthracites. However, based on economic feasibility, in great demand uses simple bituminous coal. He has the best combination of price and specific heat burning.
There are a lot of different characteristics of coal, but not all of them can be important when choosing coal for heating. In this case, it is important to know just a few key parameters: ash content, moisture and specific heat... The sulfur content may be important. The rest are required when selecting raw materials for processing. What is important to know when choosing charcoal is the size: how large the chunks are. This data is encrypted in the brand name.
Size classification:
Classification by brands and their brief characteristics:
Depending on the characteristics of coal, its grade, type and fraction, it is stored different time... (The article contains a table showing the storage periods of coal, depending on the deposit and grade).
Particular attention should be paid to the protection of coal during long-term storage (more than 6 months). In this case, a special coal shed or bunker is required, where the fuel will be protected from precipitation and direct sunlight.
Large heaps of coal during long-term storage require temperature control, since in the presence of fine fractions in combination with moisture and high temperatures, they tend to ignite spontaneously. It is advisable to purchase an electronic thermometer and a long-cord thermocouple to bury in the center of the coal heap. You need to check the temperature once or twice a week, because some brands of coal ignite spontaneously at very low temperatures: brown - at 40-60 o C, the rest - 60-70 o C. Cases of spontaneous combustion of anthracites and semi-anthracites rarely occur (in Russia, such cases not registered).
The periods of accumulation and active use of fossil coal are incommensurable with the period of human existence. The age of coal deposits accumulated over millions of years is tens and hundreds of millions of years; the active use of coal began less than 270 years ago. At the current rate of coal production, the proven reserves of coal will last for about 500 years.
Combustible stone - fossil coal - was known in antiquity. Its primitive production took place in ancient China and ancient Greece, where it was used as fuel. Ancient Roman villas were fired with coal from the deposits of Greece and Italy. Although the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle compared some of the properties of charcoal and fossil coal, for many centuries there was an opinion about the mineral origin of fossil coals. So, in 315 BC Aristotle's student Theophrastus called them "burning stones" - "anthrax" (hence the name "anthracite"). In the 16th century AD, the physician and alchemist Paracelsus viewed natural coals as "stones changed by the action of volcanic fire," and the naturalist Agricola (Fig. 7.1) said that coal is solidified oil.
Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov, in his treatise On the Layers of the Earth (1763), put forward a hypothesis about the origin of fossil coal from peat, and peat from accumulations of plant remains at the bottom of swamps. The organic origin of fossil coals was finally proved only in the 19th century by means of microscopic studies, which revealed charred or partially decomposed remnants of plant tissues, resin grains, seeds, and spores in the structure of coal matter.
There are coal deposits on all continents of the Earth and most of the islands of the World Ocean. The discovery of each of them has its own history.
There are various information about the extraction and use of coal in Ukraine. So, during geological studies, dumps of ancient coal mining were discovered in the area of Bakhmut (now Artemovsk), indicating that already in the IX-X centuries. local population mined and used it as fuel in the production of various household items.
V Western Europe coal was used later. Until the 17th century, only charcoal was used for metal smelting. The rapid development of metallurgy in
Georg Agricola (1494-1555), real name Bauer, - German scientist in the field of geology, mining and metallurgy, naturalist. In 1527-1530. he worked in St. Joachimstal (Bohemia) as a physician and pharmacist. Here he got acquainted with mining assay analysis and smelting techniques, acquired extensive knowledge in mineralogy, geology, mining and metallurgy. In 1530 G. Agrikola published his first book written in Latin “Bermannus. A Talk about Mining ”, in which it was mainly about the mining of silver and“ the experience of working with minerals ”. Agricola's next scientific work deals mainly with the development of ore deposits, metal smelting, salt extraction and mining machines. This monograph, consisting of 12 books, was published in 1556, a few months after his death, under the title "On Mining and Metallurgy" (De re metallica, libri XII). For more than two hundred years, this mining work, richly illustrated with beautiful drawings (see, for example, Fig. 7.2) - almost three hundred woodcuts - has been the main textbook for miners and metallurgists.
The 18th century required a large amount of fuel, so the stocks of industrial wood were sharply reduced. Fossil coal could replace charcoal.
By this time, the intensified search for deposits of fossil coal in different countries... An interesting story of the beginning of the consumption of coal in Veli
The beginning of the development of Donbass is associated with the sagacity of Peter I, who drew attention to the samples of local coal during the Azov campaign in 1696. According to legend, Peter I said: "This mineral, if not for us, then for our descendants will be very useful." In 1722 he signed a decree establishing the Donetsk coal basin. Interestingly, by the end of the 17th century, coal was practically not used in European industry, and no more than 150 people were employed in all English coal mining, so Peter's decision was a brilliant guess.
Great Britain. As one of the English newspapers wrote a hundred years ago: “It was at the beginning of the XIV century. London brewers, blacksmiths and locksmiths, seeing the increasing cost of firewood, tried to burn coal instead, which turned out to be both very convenient and very profitable. But the superstitious townspeople considered the burning of coal a wicked deed. A special petition was made to the king, and the use of coal was prohibited by law. However, due to the high cost of firewood, many secretly continued to break the law, so the townspeople demanded draconian measures. It is known for certain that one lawbreaker in London was executed, but it is said that there were many such cases. Then the strict laws were abolished, but for a long time there was a strong prejudice against coal due to the "stench of this type of fuel."
The ladies especially rebelled against coal; many London ladies refused to appear in houses that were not heated with wood, and did not touch any dish if it was cooked on coal, considering such dishes to be unclean.
And now coal is the strength and wealth of England, an inevitable condition of the current civilization. "
Times changed and the British attitude towards coal changed, resulting in the following tradition. The British (especially the Scots) in new year's eve the first to cross the threshold of the house must be a tall, black-haired man with a silver coin and a piece of coal. And then there will never be a shortage of food in the house in the new year, it will always be warm and cozy.
In Russia, the industrial use of coal instead of wood coal arose at the beginning of the 18th century. The first reliable information about the search and exploration of fossil coal in Russia also dates back to the beginning of the 18th century.
Under Peter I, who paid great attention to the development of mining, special expeditions were organized to various regions of the country.
In the Donetsk basin, coal deposits were discovered in 1721 in the areas of Bakhmut, Lisichansk, Shakhty.
There is a dispute between historians about the discoverers of coal in the Donbass. For a long time it was believed that the discoverer of coal in the Donetsk basin was Grigory Kapustin (Fig. 7.3), who in 1721 discovered deposits in the region of the Don, Kurdyuchay and Osedédi rivers.
However, as evidenced by archival materials, in the same 1721 Bakhmut salt-makers Nikita Vekreisky and Semyon Chirkov found coal in the Skelevataya gully 25 km from Bakhmut and began to use it in forges. And in Lisichya Balka, where later in 1796 the first mine in the Donbass came into operation, he discovered a coal deposit in December 1722. Nikolai Avramov, one of the leaders of the Black Sea mountain expedition.
Grigory Grigorievich Kapustin - clerk of the village of Danilovsky, the former Kostroma district. After examining the areas of the Upper and Middle Don, Kapustin then carried out prospecting for coal in the coastal strip of the Seversky Donets (Fig. 7.4). Local villagers, mostly from Zaporozhye Cossacks, told him that they had been using combustible stone in forges for a long time, and showed them their coal mines. At the beginning of January 1722, Grigory Kapustin reported on the results of the expedition:
“The clerk Grigory Kapustin informs you that I removed coal from the Donetsk land near the Kundryuchya river. Please accept and test it in the laboratory. "
The Berg Collegium, on whose instructions the expedition was carried out and which included mainly foreigners, did not classify Kapustin's discovery as one of industrial importance.
But in January 1724, Peter the Great received a denunciation of the Bakhmut ruler Nikita Vepreysky and captain Semyon Chirkov, in which they reported that Bakhmut artisans used the coal mined in the vicinity of Lisya Balka to cook salt and make various blacksmith forgings, and residents of nearby settlements use combustible stone for home heating.
It was then, in pursuit of Grigory Kapustin, the Berg-Collegium sent an urgent dispatch, in which the next route of the expedition was changed and it was ordered to visit the banks of the Seversky Donets and Verkhnyaya Belenkaya rivers.
Lacking food and money, the expedition of Grigory Kapustin in the fall of 1724, overcoming all difficulties, studied near the Belenkaya River, in Lisya Balka, an unprecedented layer of coal 1.14 meters high. It was the "eureka" in the coal dig that surprised foreign mining engineers.
Grigory Kapustin's message about the coal deposits he found in the Donbass in the conditions of the noble-fortress Russia did not immediately become the basis for the industrial development of rich deposits in the south of the country, although he persistently fought for the fastest use of his discoveries.
Only seventy years later, the first coal mine in the Donbass was laid in Lisya Balka. Here, in Lisichansk, the industrial development of coal began for the first time.
Expeditions to other regions of Russia also made a number of discoveries. In 1721 a coal deposit was discovered on the Tom River (Kuzbass). The same year saw the discovery of the Moscow region basin, as well as a deposit in the region of Kizel in the Urals. In 1722-1723. the St. Petersburg Berg Collegium received many reports about coal seams in the regions of the Don and Dnieper rivers.
The development of the metallurgical industry in many countries had a huge impact on the intensive search and development of coal deposits. In particular, the development of the Donetsk basin is closely related to the construction of the Lugansk iron foundry, which processes local ores, which was put into operation in 1799. Simultaneously with the beginning of the construction of the plant, coal mines were laid primarily near the village of Beloye, and then at a richer deposit on the right bank Seversky Donets in Lisichya Balka (Lisichansk). The Lisichansk mine remained the main coal mining enterprise in the Donbass until the end of the 60s of the 19th century, i.e. before the start of construction of larger mines in its central regions.
The decree of Peter I of December 7, 1722 has survived: “For the digging of coal and ores, which the podyachy Kapustin announced, send a messenger from the Berg Collegium and, in those places of that coal and ores, dig deep three or more sazhens and, having accumulated pood to five, bring to the Bergcollegium and try it. "
The development of coal deposits in other coal-mining countries began in a similar way.
Ancient natural scientists considered the ability to burn as the main distinguishing feature of fossil coals. Therefore, the chronology of the discovery of coal by mankind is associated with the chronology of development technological processes in which coal is used primarily as a fuel. Probably, the ancient Chinese were the first to use coal as a fuel: according to some information, in one of the largest coal regions of China, Funshue, it was used for smelting copper 3 thousand years ago. There are Chinese treatises of the 2nd century BC, which mention the use of coal in the production of porcelain, for the evaporation of saline solutions, etc. According to the famous traveler Marco Polo, who visited China in 1310, coal was widely used in industry and for heating. Around the same time, mentions of the use of coal as a fuel in England and Germany and the laying of the first coal mines in England are related.
However, even at the end of the 17th century, the size of the extraction and use of coal in Europe was negligible. So, in the coal-mining region of England (Bristol), only 123 people worked at 70 mines. This was due to the fact that, significantly surpassing firewood in terms of combustion heat and developed temperature, coal is still inferior to them in a number of technological characteristics- ignition temperature, sulfur content - and, unlike dry wood, smokes. Therefore, while there were enough forests in Europe, and the population density and the level of industrial development were low, they preferred to make do with wood for heating, wood tar and resin as binders and charcoal as fuel and ore reducer in metallurgy.
It is believed that the beginning of the use of coal in the chemical-technological direction was laid by the work of the chemist I. Becher, who in 1681 received a patent for “ new method the manufacture of coke and tar from peat and coal, which has never been discovered or used by anyone before. " It was the heat treatment of coal without air access with the removal of volatiles and sulfur, which turned it into coke. I. Becher describes his invention as follows: “There is peat in Holland, bituminous coal in England, but both are almost never used for burning in blast furnaces and for smelting. I have found a way to turn both the one and the other into good fuel, which not only does not smoke and does not stink, but also gives a fire just as strong for melting as charcoal ... resin from pine wood, so I got my resin in England from coal, which is the same quality as the Swedish one, and even higher in some coals. I made samples both on wood and on ropes, and the resin proved to be quite good ... "In the same 17th century, the Englishman D. Dodley conducted experimental blast-furnace smelting on fossil coal, but he kept the details of the process secret and took it with him to grave.
The discoveries of I. Becher and D. Dodley during their lifetime did not become widespread. In the meantime, to provide blast furnaces and forges with charcoal, forests were predatory exterminated. In order to preserve them, the English parliament back in 1558-1584. issued a number of decrees limiting the growth and location of metallurgical enterprises. Nevertheless, the demand for metal rapidly increased, and by the beginning of the 17th century, many forests in Europe were completely destroyed. In more industrially developed countries - England, Germany, Holland, France - firewood and charcoal became literally worth their weight in gold, which sharply slowed down the development of industry and forced an intensive search for alternative fuels.
The first reliable information about organized prospecting and exploration of minerals, in particular coal, in Russia refers to the period of the reign of Peter I.
By the decree of Peter I in 1719, the Berg Collegium (Berg Privilege) was organized, which was entrusted with the leadership of the country's mining industry and the exploration of minerals. The Berg Collegium attracted the population "both on their own and on foreign lands to search, dig, melt, cook and clean all kinds of metals ... and all kinds of ores of earth and stones."
The first statistical data on coal production in 1796-1801. indicate that during these years 2.4 thousand tons were mined, in 1810 - 2.5 and in 1820 - 4.1 thousand tons of coal.
Back in 1757 M.V. Lomonosov, in his "Word on the Birth of Metals", expressed a hypothesis about the plant origin of coals and was the first to put forward the idea that coal was formed from peat. This idea later formed the basis for the now generally accepted "theory of transformations". The first work on studying coal under a microscope belongs to the mining engineer-captain Ivanitsky (1842), who wrote: “The plant origin of coal is undoubtedly and can almost be considered proven. It is based on the gradual transition from peat and brown coal to the most crystalline species coal and anthracite ".
The beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe is quite rightly associated with the "discovery" of fossil coal for use in industry, which occurred 50–80 years after the discoveries of I. Becher. In 1735 in England, A. Derby uses coal, or rather, coke, obtained by burning coal in the so-called "heaps", where about a third of the coal was burned and two-thirds turned into coke, as a fuel and reducing agent for smelting metal in blast furnaces. ovens. In 1763 J. Watt in England, and 20 years after that I. Polzunov in Russia invented a steam engine, where fossil coal is used as fuel. In the same 1763, the French metallurgists Zhara in Luttich (Belgium) and Janzen in the Saar region built the first coke oven batteries with the production of metallurgical coke and the capture of coking tar. Finally, in 1792 the Englishman W. Murdock not only repeated the 180-year-old experiments of the Dutch naturalist Ya.B. van Galmont for the production of combustible gas from coal, but also equipped his house in Redruth with gas lighting. This is how the main directions of using fossil coal were determined: fuel (for steam boilers and household needs); fuel and reducing agent (coke for metal smelting); raw materials for obtaining liquid and gaseous products, in turn used as fuel or chemical raw materials.
The leading role in the introduction of gas lighting in cities was played by the Englishman F.-A. Wansor. Perhaps it was easier for him to solve technical issues than to overcome the prejudices of society. For example, the famous English writer W. Scott wrote about Wanzor: “One madman offers to illuminate London - what do you think? Imagine - smoke ... ”Newspapers were full of statements that artificial lighting violates the divine laws, according to which there should be darkness at night; that the lighted streets will contribute to the growth of drunkenness, depravity of the population and colds (this meant night revelers); that under the new lighting the horses will be frightened and the thieves will become insolent ... Despite this, in 1812 the English Parliament approved the establishment of the world's first "London and Westminster Company for Gas Lighting and Coke Production", in 1816 the first gas plant in the USA was opened , in 1820 - in France, in 1835 - in Russia. In 1885, England consumed about 2.5 billion cubic meters of lamp gas and slightly less coal gas as a household fuel for cooking.
TO early XIX century, the development of the production of coke for metallurgy, on the one hand, and lamp gas, on the other, further increased the amount of coal tar obtained and intensified work on the study of the possibilities of its use. In 1815, the English chemist Akkum began to obtain light oils from resin - essences, which were used as solvents and substitutes for wood turpentine. In 1822 in England the first resin distillation plant began to produce light coal tar - naphtha - for the impregnation of waterproof fabrics and raincoats. In 1825, the great English physicist and chemist M. Faraday isolated benzene from the products of coal processing, which laid the foundation for the chemistry of aromatic compounds. In 1842 the Russian chemist N.N. Zinin discovered methods for the industrial production of coal tar aniline, an important intermediate in the synthesis of artificial dyes. This discovery was practically used only in 1856, when the English student V. Perkin, while processing aniline, received the first artificial organic dye - movein - and quickly organized the production of a number of synthetic dyes in his homeland.
It would seem, what effect on coal chemistry can the invention of the incandescent grid in gas lamps have? But the fact is that before that benzene had not been extracted from the raw gas: only its presence ensured a satisfactory brightness of illumination. And after this invention, which made it possible to use gas "depleted" in benzene for lighting, the possibility of industrial extraction of crude benzene from coal gas appeared. The "father" of industrial crude benzene is considered the German Brunck. Largely thanks to him, over the last decade of the 19th century, Germany increased the production of crude benzene in coal processing by 50 times.
At present, the world demand for crude benzene and other liquid products of coal chemistry is not covered by their production from coking and semi-mowing coal. Therefore, a number of countries (Austria, Estonia, Israel, etc.) obtain them from their oil shale. The cost of coal chemistry products obtained from oil shale is several times higher than the cost of raw materials. Shale oil contains a gasoline-kerosene fraction even in a greater proportion than coal tar, in connection with which, for example, Australia plans in the future to completely replace imported oil with local oil shale.
Coal reigned supreme as a fuel for power plants until the invention of engines. internal combustion that use refined products and are much more convenient for mobile operation. By the end of the first third of the 20th century, coal was not only completely replaced by oil products from automobiles and air transport, but also noticeably lost its positions in water and rail transport. However, under the conditions of the oil blockade, which Germany underwent during the Second World War, and in the post-war years - South Africa, coal turned out to be a raw material capable of replacing liquid motor fuels. Synthetic liquid fuels were obtained from coal by hydrogenation (direct liquefaction), pyrolysis, coal gasification, followed by Fischer-Tropsch catalytic synthesis. Although, in terms of economic indicators, synthetic fuels were more expensive than petroleum and their production, as a rule, ceased after the lifting of the blockade, the gradual depletion of oil reserves and a steady rise in prices for petroleum products are forcing further development in this direction. In particular, in Ukraine, the most favorable for the production of synthesis fuels are Dnieper brown coals, Lvov-Volyn sapropelites and Boltysh oil shale.
Despite all the variety of uses for fossil coals, their main consumers to this day are heat power engineering, metallurgy, and in countryside and developing countries - and the residential sector. And the more the consumption of coal in these sectors grew, the more acute the contradiction between the ratio of required and received grades of coal, as well as between the output during production and consumption of high-quality fractions and off-grade coal fines. Therefore, since the end of the 19th century, there has been an intensive search for methods to eliminate these contradictions, and not without success.
For example, of all grades of coal with coking properties, i.e. the ability, when heated without air access, not only to give off volatile substances and sulfur, but also to sinter into a monolith with a given porosity and mechanical properties, is possessed only by coals of grades Zh (fatty) and K (coke), the share of which in the total production volume is relatively small and not meets the needs of coke production facilities. Studies of the character and nature of plasticization and subsequent solidification of coals, begun in the 1920s by F. Fischer and subsequently developed by G.L. Stadnikov, D. van Krevelen, N.S. Gryaznov, made it possible not only to create a coherent theory of plasticization, but also to establish the possibility of obtaining coking charges (mixtures) from coals of a lesser (gas, long-flame gas) and a greater (lean sintering) degree of metamorphism, which almost doubled the raw material base for the production of metallurgical coke.
From coal were obtained poisonous gases, which showed themselves so badly on the battlefields of the First World War. But on the basis of coal, however, at first wood, a means of protection against them was made. Medicinal qualities charcoal were described by Hippocrates 400 years BC, but only in 1785 a prominent Russian chemist and pharmacist, academician T.E. Lovitz showed that they are a consequence of its absorbing, or adsorptive, properties. Lovitz not only laid the foundations for the doctrine of adsorption, but also effectively used charcoal to purify and discolor sugar syrups and molasses, drinking water, raw saltpeter and even alcohol.
During the First World War, Russian professor N.D. Zelinsky invented methods of activating charcoal with water vapor and organic substances and successfully applied activated carbon in gas masks. The industry currently consumes many thousands of tons of technical activated carbons, mainly for cleaning Wastewater... These technical adsorbents are obtained by activating not wood, but fossil coals.
The layered method of burning coal, which was the only one for stoves, fireplaces, steam engines and early steam boilers, required the use of lump coal (a very small fraction of fines was allowed). This is due to the fact that at natural cravings there should be enough space between the coal particles in the layer for free access of the oxidizer, and with forced draft (blowing), small particles should not be carried out of the layer. During the period when coal was mined by hand, the required share of lump coal during the extraction was provided by miners. At the same time, the seam was not completely selected, and the labor productivity of the miners was low. The increase in production caused by the growth in consumption, which became possible only with the mechanization of mines, sharply increased the share of fines in the volume of mined coals. But burning solid fuel, which by its size does not meet the optimal requirements, reduces the efficiency of its use by 15–20%, and in some cases the combustion process stops altogether. In this regard, the problem arose of agglomeration (briquetting) of coal fines for technologies based on the consumption of lump (high-grade) coal, and in parallel - the task of developing technologies where it is possible to use coal fines and dust without agglomeration.
Usually peat, brown coal, screenings of coal and anthracite, fine-grained semi-coke and coke are subjected to briquetting. The main consumers of briquettes are the public utility sector and the coke industry. Historically, two methods of producing briquettes by mechanical means were the first to emerge: without binders (due to the intrinsic binding properties of peat and brown coal) at a temperature of 40–80 ° C and a pressing pressure of 80 MPa or more; with the addition of a binder (oil bitumen or coal tar pitch) required to ensure adhesion between particles of coal, anthracite, semi-coke and coke breeze, at a temperature of 80–100 ° C and a pressing pressure of 15–25 MPa.
The history of domestic coal briquette production dates back to the middle of the 19th century. In 1870, the first factory was built in Odessa, producing anthracite briquettes for merchant ships. In the twentieth century, anthracite mines briquetting factories were commissioned in the Donbass (Mospinskaya, Donetskaya, etc.), as well as large brown coal briquette factories at the Alexandria brown coal deposit.
In recent decades, the direction of briquetting with heat treatment of the original fine coal or briquettes at temperatures of 400–500 ° C has been actively developing in the world. These technologies make it possible to obtain the so-called "smokeless" household fuel of increased ecological purity (with a reduced sulfur content and less smoking during combustion), as well as molded coke, which further expands
has a fuel base for the coke industry.
The use of fossil coal as a fuel has increased immeasurably with the advent of steam engines and, especially, with the advent of machines capable of converting thermal energy from coal combustion into electrical energy (the first thermal power plants- TPP). At thermal power plants thermal energy coal serves to generate steam in a boiler, which rotates the rotor of a steam turbine, connected to the rotor of an electric energy generator - the most convenient type of energy for the consumer. The first thermal power plants appeared in late XIX century (in 1882 - in New York, in 1883 - in St. Petersburg, in 1884 - in Berlin, in 1895 - in Kiev). They were equipped with layered furnaces, which for a long time were the main devices for burning large amounts of fuel and were widely used for boilers with a steam output of 20–30 t / h. However, in addition to the limitation of scale and low efficiency associated with a relatively low temperature flue gas, their main disadvantage was the requirement to supply coal in the form of lumps and the limitation of the proportion of fines, which led to large entrainments of carbon from the furnace volume.
The situation changed at the end of the 20s of the XX century, when in a number of countries furnaces for flaring solid fuel in a pulverized state were developed and introduced, which made it possible to involve coal fines in the fuel base of TPPs, including increased ash content (up to 25-30% - for anthracites and lean ones, up to 30–40% - for bituminous coals), earthy brown coals, shale, and also increase the efficiency of power units to 35–40%. Thus, at present, mainly low-grade coals and off-grade fines are sent to the energy sector, which frees up high-grade coals for other uses.
Although pulverized coal, or chamber, furnaces are the most widespread in thermal power engineering today, they are increasingly being replaced by circulating fluidized bed furnaces (CFB) invented in Germany in the 60s of the XX century, which also use coal fines, but have a number of technological and environmental advantages.
property. Circulating fluidized bed boilers are characterized by low emissions of nitrogen oxides (due to low temperature process and organization of the in-furnace reduction zone) and sulfur (due to the in-furnace binding of coal sulfur by limestone), a wide range of load regulation, and most importantly - reduced requirements for the ash content of coal, which makes it possible to use for combustion not only high-ash raw coals, but also coal preparation waste. Ukraine's first circulating fluidized bed power unit electrical power 210 MW, using anthracite sludge as fuel, is being commissioned at Starobeshevskaya TPP.
It is generally accepted that the main deposits of fossil coal were formed mainly in a separate period of time, when the most favorable conditions for this were formed on Earth. Due to the connection of this period with coal, it got its name of the Carboniferous period, or Carboniferous (from the English "carbon" - "coal").
The beginning of the Carboniferous, according to scientists, is marked by a significant change in conditions on the planet's surface - the climate has become significantly more humid and warmer than in the previous period.
In countless lagoons, river deltas and swamps, an exuberant warm and moisture-loving flora reigned. In places of its mass development, colossal amounts of peat-like plant matter accumulated, and, over time, under the influence of chemical processes, they were transformed into vast deposits of coal.
Coal seams often contain (according to geologists and paleobotanists) "perfectly preserved plant remains, indicating" that many new species of flora appeared on Earth during the Carboniferous period. It was literally the time of a riot of vegetation.
Rice. 202.Sunrise in the carboniferous forest
The process of formation of coal is most often described as follows:
“This system is called coal-tar because among its layers there are the most powerful layers of coal that are known on Earth. The coal seams are due to the charring of plant remains buried in mass in the sediments. In some cases, accumulations of algae served as the material for the formation of coals, in others - accumulations of spores or other small parts of plants, in still others - trunks, branches and leaves of large plants ”.
Over time, in such organic remains, it is believed, plant tissues slowly lose part of their constituent compounds, released in a gaseous state, while some, and especially carbon, are compressed by the weight of sediments that have piled on them and turn into coal. First, peat is converted into brown coal, then into hard coal and finally into anthracite. All this happens at high temperatures.
“Anthracites are coals that have been altered by the action of heat. Lumps of anthracite are filled with a mass of small pores formed by gas bubbles released under the action of heat due to the hydrogen and oxygen contained in the coal. The source of the heat, it is believed, could be the proximity to the eruptions of basaltic lavas along the cracks of the earth's crust.
It is believed that under the pressure of 1 kilometer thick layers of sediment, a 20-meter layer of peat produces a layer of brown coal 4 meters thick. If the depth of burial of plant material reaches 3 kilometers, then the same layer of peat will turn into a layer of coal 2 meters thick. At greater depths, about 6 kilometers, and at more high temperature The 20-meter peat layer becomes an anthracite layer 1.5 meters thick.
In conclusion, we note that in a number of sources the chain "peat - brown coal - coal - anthracite" is supplemented with graphite and even diamond, resulting in a chain of transformations: "peat - brown coal - coal - anthracite - graphite - diamond" ...
The huge amount of coal that has been fueling the world's industry for more than a century is, according to "conventional" opinion, indicating the vast extent of the marshy forests of the Carboniferous era.
Rice. 203.Open pit coal mining
The above so-called biogenic (organic) version of the origin of coal is actively opposed by creationists, who are not satisfied with the age of coal seams in hundreds of millions of years, since it contradicts the texts Old Testament... They carefully compile arguments that point to the contradictions between this theory and the actual nature of the coal seams. And if we abstract from the adherence of creationists to the version of the too short history of our planet (in total, no more than ten thousand years, as follows from the Old Testament), we must admit that a number of their arguments are very serious. For example, they noticed such a rather common strange feature of coal deposits as the non-parallelism of its different layers.
“In extremely rare cases, coal seams run parallel to each other. Almost all coal deposits at some point are divided into two or more separate layers. The merging of an already nearly fractured formation with another, located above, from time to time manifests itself in reservoirs in the form of Z-joints. It is difficult to imagine how two layers located on top of each other should have arisen due to the deposition of growing and replacing forests, if they are connected with each other by crowded groups of folds or even Z-shaped joints. The connecting diagonal layer of the Z-shaped connection is especially striking proof that both layers that it connects were originally formed simultaneously and were one layer, but now they are two horizontals of petrified vegetation located parallel to each other "(R. Junker, Z .Sherer, "The history of the origin and development of life").
Such folds and Z-shaped joints fundamentally contradict the "generally accepted" scenario of the origin of coal. And within this scenario, the folds and Z-joints are totally unaccountable. But after all it comes about empirical data found everywhere! ..
Rice. 204.Z-joints of coal seams in the Oberhausen-Duisburg area
More details on the arguments against the biogenic version of the formation of coal can be found in my book "A Sensational History of the Earth", which was already mentioned earlier. Here we will cite just one more fact, which the creationists did not pay attention to, but which is simply “deadly” for the “generally accepted” theory.
Let's look at lignite and hard coal from the point of view of chemical composition.
When mining coal, the content of mineral impurities, or the so-called "ash content", which varies widely - from 10 to 60%, is of serious importance. So, the ash content of the coals of the Donetsk, Kuznetsk and Kansk-Achinsk basins is 10-15%, Karaganda - 15-30%, Ekibastuz - 30-60%.
And what is "ash content"? .. And what are these very "mineral impurities"? ..
In addition to clay inclusions, the appearance of which during the accumulation of the initial peat (if we adhere to the version of coal formation from peat) is quite natural, among the impurities ... sulfur is most often mentioned!
“In the process of peat formation, various elements get into the coal, most of which are concentrated in ash. When coal is burned, sulfur and some volatile elements are released into the atmosphere. The relative content of sulfur and ash-forming substances in coal determines the grade of coal. High-grade coal has less sulfur and less ash than low-grade coal, so it is more in demand and more expensive.
Although the sulfur content in coals can vary from 1 to 10%, most of the coals used in industry have a sulfur content of 1-5%. However, sulfur impurities are undesirable even in small amounts. When coal is burned, most of the sulfur is released into the atmosphere in the form of harmful pollutants - sulfur oxides. In addition, the sulfur impurity has Negative influence on the quality of coke and steel smelted on the basis of the use of such coke. Combining with oxygen and water, sulfur forms sulfuric acid, which corrodes the mechanisms of coal-fired thermal power plants. Sulfuric acid is present in mine waters, seeping from waste workings, in mine and overburden dumps, polluting the environment and hindering the development of vegetation. "
And here a very serious question arises - where did the sulfur come from in the coal?!. More precisely: where did she come from in such a large number?!. Up to ten percent! ..
Rice. 205.In a peat bog
I’m ready to bet - even with my far from complete education in the field of organic chemistry - there has never been such amounts of sulfur in wood and could not have been! .. Neither in wood, nor in other vegetation, which could become the basis of peat, in the future transformed into coal! .. There is several orders of magnitude less sulfur! ..
Moreover. If you type in a search engine a combination of the words "sulfur" and "wood", then most often only two options are displayed, both of which are associated with the "artificially applied" use of sulfur - for wood preservation and for pest control. In the first case, the property of sulfur is used to crystallize - it clogs the pores of the tree and is not removed from them at normal temperature. In the second, the application is based on the toxic properties of sulfur, even in small quantities.
If there was so much sulfur in the original peat, how could the trees that formed it grow at all? .. Or, for some unknown reason, some "ancient sulfur", contrary to its modern behavior, did not clog the pores of ancient plants? ..
And how, instead of dying out, on the contrary, all those insects that bred in the Carboniferous period and at a later time in incredible quantities and fed on plant sap, in which there was so much poisonous sulfur, felt more than comfortable? .. However, even now it is swampy the terrain creates a very comfortable conditions…
But there is not just a lot of sulfur in coal, but a lot! .. Since we are talking about even sulfuric acid! ..
Moreover, coal is often accompanied by deposits of such a useful sulfur compound as pyrite, which is useful in the economy. Moreover, the deposits are so large that their production is organized on an industrial scale! ..
“... in the Donetsk Basin, coal and anthracite mining of the Carboniferous period also goes hand in hand with the development of the iron ores mined here ... Pyrite is an almost constant companion of coal and, moreover, sometimes in such quantities that it makes it unusable (for example, coal from the Moscow Basin). Sulfur pyrite goes to the production of sulfuric acid, and from it, by metamorphization, ... iron ores originated. "
This is no longer a mystery. This is a direct and immediate contradiction between the theory of coal formation from peat and real empirical data !!!
