Coal is a vital resource that we depend upon as human beings. We use coal everyday either for transportation or heating a building. We need to stop taking advantage of it and start finding new ways to produce energy.
Coal is a fossil fuel. It can be identified as a black or brown rock that can be ignited and burned for energy. It is chemically made up of sulfur, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen elements. Coal is classified by degrees of hardness, moisture, and heat content. As the sea deposits layers of other materials over the peat through centuries, the peat was tightly compacted and dried. (Illinois Coal Association, 2013)
Coal is mined from either surface mining or underground mining. Surface mining include strip mining, open pit mining and mountain top mining. Topsoil and rock above the seam, called the overburden. The overburden is then removed and placed to one side, exposing all the coal Underground mining include borehole mining, drift mining, hard rock mining, shaft mining, and slope mining. For underground mining, workers us a continuous mining machine that cuts through walls in the cave. Usually there are rock pillars that hold up the cave ceiling preventing a cave in. The coal is then drilled and loaded on to the trucks or trains where it is then transported to factories or industries that convert it in to electricity or wherever it is needed. (World Coal Association, 2013)
Coal is the most affordable fossil fuel compared to petroleum and oil. Coal prices vary in different places. In places where coal is used a lot, the price increases. The US spends around 1/3 of a trillion dollars on coal annually. Kansas produces around 1.4 million dollars worth of coal a year. (World Coal, 2013)
Coal is generally used for e...
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Coal is by far the most abundant of fossil fuels, and will be available for much longer than oil. Having been harvested and burned since the 13th century, a massive infrastructure has been formed to quickly and efficiently mine, deliver, and burn coal. Coal is also the cheapest of fossil fuels (The Futurist, 1997)
How coal is formed is quite an interesting topic. It started over millions of years ago in ancient swamps when vegetation and trees died and formed peat (it is where vegetation builds up and turns into a super messy pile of stuff). This peat was eventually covered with either dirt or sand. As the peat is covered and pressure the gas that the peat gives off starts to get trapped in the new forming coal. Several years the peat now turns to rock known as coal. As the planetary plates shift the coal moves and forms pockets and runs in the earth. Then people came along and found out how to harness is power. People had to get the coal out of the earth. One way they found out how to get it out was to dig it out of the underground tunnels to find where the coal runs. Another way to get the coal is to strip mine the coal this is where the miners remove huge amounts of dirt to get to the coal. Both of these mining techniques are extremely dangers.
Meeting rising demand for clean, reliable and affordable electricity will require the use of coal for the foreseeable future, which in turn will require the development and demonstration of new, environmentally-sound technologies for coal-based electricity generation.
Coal companies have been destroying our mountains, polluting our water, and poisoning our communities for far too long.
Today 80% of the energy we use comes from fossil fuels and about 1% comes from solar energy, which is not such a bright idea since nonrenewable resources, such as oil, coal, and gas, are limited (Eia 1). Most significant uses of coal are in steel production, electricity, cement manufacturing, and as a liquid fuel. Solar energy is one of the least used energy sources we have access to in the world; it is also one our mother Earth is relying on to save the nonrenewable fuels, such as fossil fuels. Solar energy is a very useful resource that many of us do not take advantage of because of the limited amount of information we know about it. Cooking coal, also known as metallurgical coal, is used for steel production as well. Coal comes from very
There are three main types of coal. These types are: bituminous, lignite, and anthracite. Anthracite coal is considered to be the most valuable, as it contains the most carbon. More carbon within the coal means that it contains a higher energy content. (Energy Quest) Coal is mostly used to provide energy to plant that manufacture electricity, steel, and cement.
The price of coal remains stable unlike the prices of other fuel and energy sources. Coal is also one of the most abundant energy sources among all energy and fuel sources. Coal is also easy to burn and produces high amounts of energy upon combustion. Coal mining is also responsible for employing over 134,000 people in the United States alone. Coal is also independent of weather conditions, unlike other energy sources. If it happens to raining or strong winds occur, that is not an issue. Power Plants will continue to operate and people will continue to work. This also means that the supply of electricity from these sources is continuous and more consistent than electricity produces by solar panels or wind
The reason we don’t replace coal energy is because it produces a profitable amount of energy, just like most cars get fairly good mpg. While solar and wind energy are not efficient and take a ton of sun and wind as well as entire farms of panels or mills to produce the same amount of energy, which goes back to solar and wind being more expensive.
Most of america does not know but two out of twelve percent of the united states coal will be shut down by or in 2025.(Jeff Spross) This is terrible because coal is what the world runs on. People in america are happy because it is going to make the environment better, but when it comes down to it they will complain when electric prices go up because it cost more to make energy. Coal is what powers phones, houses, schools, restaurants, gas stations, it is what powers the tools to build the houses that keep us warm at night, and the cities and towns we all call home across America.
In my opinion, coal is not a good fuel to use for the production of electricity. I believe this because, even though the way coal is mined and burned as been improved, there is an impact on the environment, which results in global warming. There are many different sources that can be used to produce electricity, including; solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity, geothermal electricity and biomass. All of these examples have a smaller, if not no, impact on the environment and are sustainable.
So, what is coal? Coal is a fossil fuel and is the altered remains of prehistoric vegetation and organisms that originally accumulated in swamps and peat bogs. The energy we get from coal today comes from the energy that plants absorbed from the sun millions of years ago.
All though coal has a cheap price to it, the damage it does to mother nature is far more greater. The world consumption of coal was the amount of 100million tons of oil in 1860. As of now it has increased dramatically, up to 2200 tons in the year 2000. It is easy to see the life time of coal consumption by simply dividing the coal reserves consumption, and the numbers add up to about 250 years worth. Foreign countries like China are building coal power plants at an alarming rate, it is assumed that a two 500MW coal fired power plants are being built every week.
There are three types of fossil fuels- coal, crude oil, and natural gas. Coal was formed very slowly. Even the “newest” coal we use today was formed a million years ago. Most of the coal we use was formed 300 million years ago, when the Earth was covered with swamps. When plants and trees died, they sank to the bottoms of the swamps. These plants and trees were layered on top of each other, forming a substance called peat. Peat is considered the first stage in coal formation. It is a mixture of water, leaves, braches, and other plant debris. Over time, the Earth changed, and deposits of sand, clay, and other minerals were formed, burying the peat. Sedimentary rock...
Burning and mining coal for fuel is harmful to the environment but because how cheap and easy it is to find many people are unwilling to give it up as a fuel source. One of the problems with coal is that they are limited and are non-renewable so once it has been used we won’t be able to use it again.
Fuels like coal, and oil that once were a fine innovation in creating energy are now rapidly deleting and one day will be gone forever; energy that won’t last is often referred to as non-renewable energy. Besides being set up to fail and become inefficient in the future, fossil fuel energy is not clean to use and poses several environmental complications. Coal, for instance is “the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal combustion not only produces sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides that contribute to acid rain and snow, it generates millions of tons of particulates that cause asthma and other respiratory diseases.” As with all usage of fossil fuels, it creates enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to greenhouse gas. Not only are fossil fuels dirty, they also pose as a security risk and unforgiving on the American wallet. (Saini)