Bituminous coal is a general characteristic. Coal in Russia: main deposits, coal classification and characteristics What is coal mined

The main tasks facing the coal industry include mining and primary processing (enrichment) of hard and brown coal. Coal mining is the largest of all branches of the fuel industry in terms of the number of personnel and the cost of fixed assets. Such a constituent entity of the Russian Federation as the Kemerovo Region owes its economic potential to the coal industry to a large extent. Coal basins of Russia

On the territory of Russia there are deposits of various types of coal - brown, bituminous and anthracite. The Russian Federation occupies one of the leading places in the world in terms of the amount of fossil fuel in the subsoil. The total amount of coal is 6421 billion tons, 5334 billion tons of them are conditioned.

The amount of coal in the total reserves is more than 60% of all reserves. Process fuel - coking coal - occupies 10% of the total reserves, 3.6% of the gross product falls on the share of coal production in the fuel and energy complex, and in the total volume of Russia's GDP, this industry accounts for about one percent.

The amount of coal consumed by the Russian domestic market increased by 2.3% and amounted to 178 million tons. Of these, 38 million tons were consumed for coking, and power engineers consumed 140 million tons.

If we look at the map of Russia, then more than 90% of the deposits are located in the east of the country, mainly in Siberia. If we compare the volumes of production, then the most significant fields for the country can be called the Kuznetskoye, Kansko-Achinskoye, Tungusskoye, Pechora and Irkutsko-Cheremkhovskoye fields.

Development of the coal industry in Russia

In the world, in terms of the volume of coal mined, Russia occupies the fifth place (ahead of China, the United States of America, Australia and India), 75% of the produced fuel is used by power engineers in the production of heat and electricity, 25% is used for the needs of the metallurgical and chemical industries.

A small percentage of the total production is exported. The main export markets are Japan and the Republic of Korea.

In Russia, the main method is open pit mining - 75% of the total. The use of the open method is due to the shallow depth of occurrence. To use this mining method, you need to remove the top layers of the soil. For opening, bulldozers, scrapers, bucket wheel excavators, draglines are used.

Then the rock is crushed. For crushing, water cannons, crushers are used, sometimes drilling-and-blasting methods of breaking coal are used. Mining in this way occupies a fairly large area of the territory.

Open pit coal mining has the following positive aspects:

Coal mining

production of a unit of production occurs in a short time interval;
low cost;
relative safety;

Disadvantages:

Coal mined by the open method contains a large percentage of impurities.

Mine production is more costly. The application is due to the occurrence of layers of useful rock at great depths. The arrangement of mines requires large capital expenditures, both financially and temporarily. When coal is mined in mines, a large proportion of manual labor takes place. Some of the mines are up to one kilometer deep.

Advantages:

high quality of the extracted raw materials;
less impact on the environment;

Disadvantages:

the most unsafe mining method;
serious financial investments are required.

The largest deposits in Russia

Kuzbass

Mineral resources. Lignite basins

The Kuznetsk coal basin, or Kuzbass for short, is the largest deposit in terms of coal reserves in the Russian Federation, and the largest in the world. It is located in the West of Siberia.

The main part of the basin is located in the Kemerovo region. Kuzbass produces 56% of hard coal and about 80% of coking coal mined in the Russian Federation, in the total amount of two hundred million tons per year.

In the Kuznetsk Basin, the coals are different in quality. Coal with a higher quality lies deeper, and the closer to the surface the ash content and moisture content of the coal increases. Long distances from the main fuel consumers - the central part of the country, Kamchatka and Sakhalin, is the main disadvantage. The production is carried out by the open method.

Kansk-Achinsk basin

This pool is located in central Siberia. The main type of coal mined is brown coal, which is widely used in the power industry. It is mined by open pit mining.

The amount of coal reserves is 638 billion tons, fuel is used by local power plants to generate electricity and heat. A significant part of the extracted mineral is used at the thermal power station of the Irkutsk energy system. The largest consumers of Kansk-Achinsk coal are CHPs located in the cities:

Krasnoyarsk;
Abakan;
Sunny;
Zheleznogorsk.

Of no small importance for the basin is the presence of the Trans-Siberian railway, which transports coal both in the western direction of the country (for the needs of the Ryazan State District Power Plant) and to the Far East.

Tunguska basin

The largest coal deposits

The Tunguska Basin, the leading one in Russia, is one of the largest coal basins in the world. Its area is approximately one million square kilometers. The amount of coal in the depths is about two billion tons, and 95% of them are stone. This amount of coal is capable of meeting all the world's needs for a period of five hundred years.

Due to the lack of access roads and remoteness from industrial centers, it is not used at full capacity. The main consumer of coal is the constituent entity of the Russian Federation, the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Pechora coal basin

Coal mining in the Irkutsk-Cheremkhovsky basin

It is located on the western slope of the Pai-Khoi ridge. Administratively located in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the Komi Republic.

In the depths of the basin, there are mainly high quality coking coals. Extraction is carried out using the mine method.

Annual production of 12.6 million tons of coal, which is equal to 4% of the total amount of coal mined in Russia. The Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant is the largest consumer.

Irkutsk-Cheremkhovsky basin

The Irkutsk coal basin covers an area of 42.7 thousand km². The amount of coal in the bowels of the basin is 9 billion tons, of which 94% is coal, brown coal accounts for the remaining 6%.

The thickness of the layers is from one to ten meters. Long distances from large consumers do not allow the use of mined coal, except in local power plants. For the extraction of fuel, an open method is used.

Impact on the environment

The nature of the problems of environmental impact of the coal mining sector is mainly associated with mining operations. Especially in open pit mining. During blasting operations, tons of dust are raised into the sky, and are carried by the wind for many kilometers. More than fifty percent of coal mines are classified as explosive, and the danger of spontaneous combustion of coal dust is also high.

During blasting operations, tons of dust are raised into the sky, and are carried by the wind for many kilometers.

When working underground, there is a high probability of land subsidence, which can be prevented. When mining, the voids formed underground must be filled with valueless rock or other materials.

Many countries around the world are already using this technology successfully. First of all, in those countries where standards and programs for the remediation of territories where mining operations were carried out have been adopted.

Each business entity in the extraction of fossil fuel must comply with the safety requirements adopted in the mining industry. Failure to follow these rules can lead to very dangerous consequences:

during mining, changes in the landscape are possible;
the development of soil erosion associated with subsidence of the earth's surface, the soil cover is disturbed;
there is a deterioration in the quality of air and water;
underground coal mining produces methane emissions;
underground fires;
spontaneous combustion in dumps;
shedding of slopes;

To minimize environmental impacts, each business entity engaged in the extraction and processing of coal must contribute to the solution of this problem.

Video: Coal. Modern coal mining!

Since I live in the land of miners, I could not help but become interested in the methods of extracting this mineral, of which, by the way, there are not so many. Taking this opportunity, I will try to briefly talk about the pros and cons of each of them.

Coal mining: mine method

Mining the fossil in this way offers a huge advantage, since the most valuable fuels are found at great depths. At the same time, coal practically does not contain waste rocks, which cannot be said about the open method, but about it a little later. So, in order to get to the deposits, deep vertical tunnels are drilled. As soon as a formation is found, its horizontal development begins. Sometimes the depth reaches 1.5 km, for example, the Gvardeyskaya mine, which is located in the Donbass. However, this method contains many disadvantages:

the threat of flooding;
since methane is an eternal companion of coal seams, it is fraught with suffocation of workers or undermining;
the deeper the depth, the higher the temperature, which means there is a risk to people and equipment.

In the world, about 40% of the world's reserves are mined in this way.

Coal mining: open-pit or open-pit mining

In this case, there is no need not only for expensive drilling, but also for the construction of a number of ground communications. The bottom line is to undermine waste rock, and then huge excavators, crushers and trucks come into play, which process the rock and take it to the dumps. This method is less dangerous, but still there are some risks associated with it. This is the threat of unplanned detonation, and the poisoning of workers by exhaust, and careless handling of traumatic equipment.

Hydraulic coal mining

In principle, this is the same mine, but there is one peculiarity: the transportation of the fossil is carried out by a stream of water under enormous pressure. It turns out that underground waters are a headache for miners, they work for their benefit. Today, this method is considered one of the best, since it replaces the laborious process of transportation. The disadvantages include the dependence of production on the type of rock, and the constant contact of water with equipment.

Coal is a sedimentary rock that forms in the earth's bed. 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. The ideal place for this is 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 is obtained - the starting 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.

Bituminous 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 upper 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.

When I was invited to see how coal is mined in the Amur Region, I did not immediately know where to fly. Moscow and the Amur Region, where the coal mines of the Amurskiy Ugol company (part of the Russian Ugol holding) are located, are separated by thousands of kilometers, six hours of flight and six hours of time difference. I’ll get enough sleep during the flight, I thought, collected the equipment, tightened my time zones and flew.

Today in we will learn how brown coal is mined.

When I arrived at the coal deposits and said "quarry", I was immediately corrected - not "quarry", but "open pit". The cut because the way the coal is mined is such that when the waste rock is excavated, it creates long indentations in the ground that look like cuts. If you look at the North-Eastern section near the city of Raichikhinsk from space, you can see the following picture - strips in the ground characteristic of coal mining.

Mining at the North-Eastern section (area of 500 km2) has been conducted since 1932. The Erkovetskiy section (the area of the deposit is 1250 km2) began to provide the country with coal in 1991. The thickness of the coal seam here is 3.5 - 5 meters.

Brown coal does not lie very deep underground, therefore it is mined in an open way, which is considered safer, more economical and faster. At first glance at a piece of coal, the question arises "why is it brown if it is black?" But the specialists of Amurskiy Ugol explained to me that earlier the quality of coal was determined by the trace of a line left on a porcelain plate. Amur coal, as you understand, leaves a brown trail.

Brown coal is less caloric than coal and anthracite. We look at Wikipedia and find out that the calorie content, that is, the heat of combustion, is the amount of heat released during the complete combustion of a mass or volume unit of a substance. Coal also has other quality parameters - moisture and sulfur content, volatiles and ash content. All this is carefully analyzed by the departments of technological quality control of coal and coal chemical laboratories.

But back to the process of extracting solid fuel. Everything here, at first glance, is quite simple - a giant walking dragline excavator opens coal (removes waste rock), and a smaller excavator loads coal into wagons. That's all! But if it were that simple, there would be no end to those wishing to mine coal. In reality, coal mining requires large investments, experience and knowledge, a team of real professionals with skills and skills that are rare now, as well as an extensive fleet of expensive mining and transport equipment, their own repair shops or factories, motor depots, training centers ... I will not load you with information about how geologists are looking for coal, how they get a license for the extraction of minerals, and let's go straight to the most interesting and understandable.

Coal mining has always been associated with large, no, huge excavators. Actually, in the coal mines, they immediately catch the eye because of their impressive appearance and majestic bearing - the arrows proudly upturned immediately make it clear that somewhere there is mining "black gold".

Each excavator has an abbreviation in its name. For example, ЭШ 15/90 means - Walking Excavator, 15 cubic meters - bucket volume, and 90 meters - boom length. In total, 24 such mastodons are involved in the open-pit mines of Amurskiy Ugol, differing in boom length and bucket volume. In some buckets the UAZ "loaf" will easily fit, and in others - the Land Cruiser SUV.

Overburden (excavation of sandstone and clay) occurs as follows: the excavator driver lowers the bucket to the ground, then, using the control levers, pulls it towards himself, filling it.

Then the driver, by turning the base and the boom, transfers the bucket to the side of the dumps and pours it out. For a month, the excavator crew must open about 300 thousand cubic meters of rock.

Where the dragline worked, there are mountains of waste rock - dumps. Therefore, the area where coal is mined in places resembles lunar landscapes. But only as long as coal is being mined. After the development of the site, reclamation is immediately carried out on it - the dumps are leveled, a fertile layer of earth is added, trees are planted. In a few years, most people will not even notice that there used to be coal mining and walking giants working here!

In the meantime, geology can be studied along the landscape of the section.

By the way, after the dragline got to the coal, and then the coal was selected (that is, it was dug completely on some area), the cut is backfilled with the same rock - a real waste-free production!

It was a discovery for me that walking excavators (and many other excavators too) run on electric power. Each mountainous section of the mine receives electricity from a 35/6 kV substation.

All equipment at the pits works around the clock and seven days a week: teams work in shifts. Small indulgences in work can be done only in case of abnormally low temperature - when giant buckets begin to freeze tightly to the ground.

But I'll tell you more about draglines later in a separate post. Keep for updates.

Coal seams lie close to groundwater, so it must be constantly pumped out with pumps. Here you can clearly see which layer of rock was removed to get to the coal deposits.

Well, then everything is simple - the EKG-5A excavator picks up coal in a ladle and loads it directly into wagons, which will take it in an ordinary form to a consumer or to a coal sorting site.

The bucket of the EKG-5A excavator holds 5 cubic meters of coal, and in order to fill a standard car, it is necessary to load 13-14 coal buckets into it.

Coal is brought for sorting in order to divide it into different fractions. Local Raichikhinskaya GRES and Blagoveshchenskaya CHPP consume fine coal, while the larger one is used for housing and communal services, in other words, for heating.

This is how the coal sorting section looks like from the inside. If you don't know what it is and how it works, then the next action will be a surprise, as it became for me.

This is a kind of "carousel" for carriages. The operator from the side checks that the car has entered the car dumper platform, gives a signal, and the car, which is standing on the platform, rises up and dumps the contents into the receiving hopper.

In a few seconds, this huge mechanism (stationary side car dumper) puts the car in its previous position.

An impressive sight!

After that, from the receiver, the coal is sent through a complex system of conveyors through a special gallery for sorting, where it is divided into different fractions with the help of screens and vibrating screens. Well, then into the oven to provide electricity and heat.

That's all! Thanks for reading.

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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 are excellent for heating both industrial premises and private houses. In total, with the help of chemical processing of coal, more than 400 types of products are produced, 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, the exploration of new deposits is being intensively conducted, 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. Local deposits are being actively developed in the Rostov Region, the most promising of which is Gukovskoye. Processing of coal from these deposits gives high quality coal grades - anthracites (AC and AO).

The main quality characteristics of coal

Different industries require different grades of 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 into:

- Concentrates (burned for heating in steam boilers and generating electricity);
- Industrial products used in the metallurgical industry;
- Sludge, in fact, is a fine fraction (up to 6mm) and dust after rock crushing. 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:

- Brown coal 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, simple coal is in great demand. It has an optimal combination of price and specific heat of combustion.

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 only a few key parameters: ash content, moisture content 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 coal is the size: how large the pieces 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 for different times. (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 ones - at 40-60 ° C, the rest - 60-70 ° C. Cases of spontaneous combustion of anthracites and semi-anthracites rarely occur (in Russia, such cases not registered).