Coal mining

Summary

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. Coal mining has had many developments in recent years, from the early days of men tunneling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts to large open-cut and longwall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of draglines, trucks, conveyors, hydraulic jacks and shearers. The coal mining industry has a long history of significant negative environmental impacts on local ecosystems, health impacts on local communities and workers, and contributes heavi

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining

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The Optimized Integration of Biomass Fuel in the District Heating System in Poznan, Poland: Part 2

Energy demand continuously increases what contributes to higher emissions of GHG. Moreover, the primary energy sources like coal, natural gas and oil are depleting. To manage this problem, the scientists have worked on the different possibilities of renewable energy conversion technologies in order to get the most useful and cleanest type of energy. In this work, there are investigated possible biomass conversion technologies in order to satisfy energy demand for Poznan, the city in Poland. Actually, the energy demand is met by coal combined with heat and power plant (CHP). There is an interest of changing actual coal CHP plant with biomass to minimize emissions. The aim of this work is to choose the best thermo-chemical biomass conversion option in the concept of minimum investment cost. To achieve this goal, the thermo-economic analysis and optimization of different biomass conversion technologies have to be conducted. First, on the basis of the literature review, the models of biomass conversion processes are modeled in Belsim Vali software. Then, from 2008, two different scenarios of energy demand are defined for the city. In the next step of this work, there is conducted energy integration in order to find an optimal set of designed boundary conditions through maximizing the units of performance for the most promising types of biomass conversion processes. Finally, an optimal configurations and sizes of the equipments are found by thermo- economic optimization.

2011

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This review explores the potential of separating and recycling rare earth elements (REEs) from different energy conversion systems, such as wind turbines, electric vehicles batteries, or lighting devices. The REEs include 17 elements (with global production of 242 kilometric tons in 2020) that can be found abundantly in nature. However, they are expensive and complicated to extract and separate with many environmental challenges. The overall demand for REEs is continuously growing (with a 10% yearly increase) and it is quite clear that recycling has to be developed as a supply strategy in addition to conventional mining. However, the success of both mining and recycling depends on appropriate separation and processing technologies. The overall REE recycling situation today is very weak (only 2% of REEs are recovered by recycling processes compared with 90% for iron and steel). The biggest recycling potentials rely on the sectors of lamp phosphors (17%), permanent magnets (7%), and NiMH batteries (10%) mainly at the end-of-life stage of the products. The profitability of rare earth recycling mostly depends on the prices of the elements to accommodate the processing costs. Therefore, end-of-life REE recycling should focus on the most valuable and critical REEs. Thus, the relevant processes, feed, and economic viability warrant the detailed review as reported here.

2022

Hydromechanical modelling of shaft sealing for CO2 storage

Anne-Catherine Adolphine M Dieudonné

The geological sequestration of CO2 in abandoned coal mines is a promising option to mitigate climate changes while providing sustainable use of the underground cavities. In order to certify the efficiency of the storage, it is essential to understand the behaviour of the shaft sealing system. The paper presents a numerical analysis of CO2 transfer mechanisms through a mine shaft and its sealing system. Different mechanisms for CO2 leakage are considered, namely multiphase flow through the different materials and flow along the interfaces between the lining and the host rock. The study focuses on the abandoned coal mine of Anderlues, Belgium, which was used for seasonal storage of natural gas. Atwo-dimensional hydromechanicalmodelling of the storage site is per- formed andCO2 injection into the coalmine is simulated.Model predictions for a period of 500 years are present- ed and discussedwith attention. The role and influence of the interface between the host rock and the concrete lining are examined. In addition the impact of some uncertain model parameters on the overall performance of the sealing systemis analysed through a sensitivity analysis.

Elsevier2015