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Firedamp is any flammable gas found in coal mines, typically coalbed methane. It is particularly found in areas where the coal is bituminous. The gas accumulates in pockets in the coal and adjacent strata and when they are penetrated the release can trigger explosions. Historically, if such a pocket was highly pressurized, it was termed a "bag of foulness". Damp is the collective name given to all gases (other than air) found in coal mines in Great Britain and North America. As well as firedamp, other damps include blackdamp (nonbreathable mixture of carbon dioxide, water vapour and other gases); whitedamp (carbon monoxide and other gases produced by combustion); poisonous, explosive stinkdamp (hydrogen sulfide), with its characteristic rotten-egg odour; and the insidiously lethal afterdamp (carbon monoxide and other gases) which are produced following explosions of firedamp or coal dust. Often hyphenated as fire-damp, this term for a flammable type of underground mine gas in first part derives via the Old English fyr, and from the proto-Germanic fūr for "fire" (the origin of the same word in Dutch and German, with similar original spellings in Old Saxon, Frisian, and Norse, as well as Middle Dutch and Old High German). In the second part, the meaning of "damp" (most commonly understood to imply humidity) presents evidence of having been separated from that newer, irrelevant meaning at least by the first decade of the 18th century, where the original relevant meaning of "vapor" also derives from a Proto-Germanic origin, dampaz, which gave rise to its immediate English predecessor, the Middle Low German damp (with no record of an Old English intermediary). As with the derivation of the first, the proto-Germanic dampaz gave rise to many other cognates, including the Old High German damph, the Old Norse dampi, and the modern German Dampf, the last of which still translates as "vapor". Firedamp is explosive at concentrations between 4% and 16%, with most explosions occurring at around 10%.

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Related concepts (5)

Coal mining

Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a 'pit', and the above-ground structures are a 'pit head'. In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.

Safety lamp

A safety lamp is any of several types of lamp that provides illumination in places such as coal mines where the air may carry coal dust or a build-up of inflammable gases, which may explode if ignited, possibly by an electric spark. Until the development of effective electric lamps in the early 1900s, miners used flame lamps to provide illumination. Open flame lamps could ignite flammable gases which collected in mines, causing explosions; safety lamps were developed to enclose the flame to prevent it from igniting the explosive gases.

Firedamp