(Photo Credit : Peabody Energy/Wikimedia Commons)īoth of these popular underground mining strategies, i.e., room and pillar and longwall mining, are performed with very powerful mining machines that can rapidly cut coal from the face of the seams. Now, let’s look into each of these two mining types in a bit more detail.

They need to clear this material so the layer of coal is clear and available for extraction. – that mix with the coal deposits and cover them near the earth’s surface. The job of a miner primarily involves removing ‘overburden’- rock, soil, trees etc. To qualify for surface mining, the coal deposits must be within 50-80 meters of the surface. Surface mining and underground mining are the two major schools of coal mining. Both forms of mining cause critical ecological shifts, not only killing dozens of miners every year, but also afflicting ill health effects on infants born in the proximity of colliery operations. All of this coal comes from mines that are either (near) surface or underground. 90% of that coal consumption went into the generation of electricity, while the rest (just 10%) was burned for other industrial/commercial requirements. The US burned roughly 700 million tons of coal in 2016-enough to fill a standard railroad car every 4 seconds. Most of the coal burned in power plants in the US are either bituminous or sub-bituminous.

Coal TypesĬoal can be broadly classified into four types: lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite, in ascending order of carbon and energy content. Coal obtained in different places is not the same and varies widely depending on the nature of the soil and geographic conditions. Over time, this organic matter transforms from moist peat into coal-an energy- and carbon-rich dense black or brownish-black sedimentary rock. Let’s now look into more detail of what coal actually is and how it is mined.Ĭoal is formed when dead plants and other organic matter is submerged in swamp environments and subjected to the geological forces of pressure and heat over millions of years. Take away the monstrous-but-sophisticated machinery and eco-friendly-but-incredulous marketing jargon and it’s the same murky, perilous job that it’s always been-ﬁnd the black stuff and dig it up for consumption by power plants. There’s something brutally simple about coal mining. Coal miners literally raze entire mountain ranges to feed our insurmountable desire for cheap energy. The industrial revolution was only possible due to the utilization of coal to power steam engines. These steam engines helped in the rapid expansion of international trade, as they played a critical role in the development of railways and steamships.Ĭoal mining (also called colliery) is the process of extracting coal from the ground’s surface or from deep underground. This is not only true of the US Europe has also reaped the rich benefits of coal. There are two major types of coal mining: underground mining and surface mining.Ĭoal mining satiates roughly 1/4 of our global energy demands, and it is coal that has powered America’s power needs for decades. The industrial revolution was only possible due to the utilization of coal to power steam engines. Coal mining involves extracting coal from the ground’s surface or from deep underground.

Boundless game coal seam