05-09-2024

Energy Resources: Coal and Natural Gas

Coal
• Black to brownish-black colored
combustible sedimentary rock
made of decomposed organic
material of leaves, stems, seeds,
and spores, termed humus
• Occurs in layers, beds, veins, or
coal seams Figure: Small seams of black lignite
coal exposed by
blasting. Note vertical grooves
which mark the holes used to
set the charges.

© Lee Prince/ShutterStock, Inc.

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Coal (cont.)
• Coal use
• Largest source of energy for the
production of electricity worldwide
• Burned to manufacture steel
• Processed to make liquid fuel

Figure: Percent of electrical

power production in the U.S. by
type for 2011.

Data from: U.S. EIA.

Coal (cont.)

• Coal formation
• When plants die, their humic material typically reacts with O2 and decays:
CH2O + O2 → CO2 + H2O
• To form coal, humic matter must be buried without reacting with O2 from the
atmosphere
• Generally requires an environment with water
• Small amount of O2 dissolved in water will be stripped out, producing an anaerobic
environment
• If the organic matter flux deposited is large compared to other sediment in the water,
peat is produced

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Geology of Coal
• Coal: Transformed plant matter in ancient swamps
• Estuaries, lagoons, low-lying coastal plains or delta environment

• Coal forming process

• Massive dead plants buried in an anaerobic
(O-deficient) environment peat prolonged bury and transformation to
increase carbon content coal

Formation of Coal

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Coal (cont.)
• A soft brown to blackish colored low-rank coal forms termed lignite

Figure: Characterization of layers of plant organic matter with the transformations that
occur with increasing depth in the earth as it is transformed to coal.

Coal (cont.)

• With greater burial and time, first a subbituminous, then a bituminous, and finally the
highest rank coal, anthracite, is created
• Heat content per kilogram increases as the water content decreases
• Coal is destroyed at great depths in the earth as anthracite is transformed into massive
graphite
• Graphite deposits are mined for a variety of uses, including making graphite crucibles
(for the production of carbon steel) and use as a lubricant

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Coal (cont.)
• A reflectance microscope is used to
examine polished sections of coal
• The coal shows up as shades of gray
in reflected light, then the
reflectivity of the maceral’s surface
is measured
• Temperature history of source beds
for petroleum and coal is
determined by studying vitrinite
reflectance

Figure: Coal rank and organic maturation parameters

related to the amount of hydrocarbon generation.

Production vs Consumption of coal

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Coal (cont.)

• Production and reserves

• Coal resources are often reported in Btu
• Different grades of coal release different amounts of energy, and it is the energy that is
of most interest
• World coal consumption is predicted to increase by ~50% from 2006 to 2030
• Coal’s share of world energy consumption will increase slightly from 27% in 2006 to 28%
in 2030
• Increased demand will be mainly for increased production of electricity

Coal (cont.)
• Resource predictions
• Predictions are subject to error
• Data quality on which coal
reserves are determined is poor
• Energy Watch Group argues that
coal reserves are overstated and
has forecast that peak coal will
occur as early as 2025, then
production will fall into terminal
decline
Figure: World coal production
prediction predicated on extent of
reserves by country.
Modified from the Energy Watch Group, 2007, Coal:
Resources and future production, EWG-Series No
1/2007, Ludwig-Bolkow-Foundation, Ottobrunn.
Available at http://go.nature.com/jngfsa.

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Coal (cont.)
• Most coal is used in the countries where it is mined, due to
transportation costs

Table: Coal reserves and production share for countries with the greatest reserves end of
year 2011.
Data from: BP Statistical Review of World
Energy, June 2012

Coal mining
1) Underground mining 2) Surface mining

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Countour strip mining

• Strip mining, as the name describes, is a process of removing rock and
soil in strips to get to the valuable mineral ores below. After miners
extract the resources, they put back the leftover rock and soil, called
mining
• spoils or tailings, to fill in the hole.

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Auger mining
• Auger mining, method for recovering coal by boring into a coal seam
at the base of strata exposed by excavation.
• Normally one of the lowest-cost techniques of mining, it is limited to
horizontal or slightly pitched seams that have been exposed by geologic
erosion.
• Augering is usually associated with contour strip-mining, recovering
coal for a limited depth beyond the point where stripping becomes
uneconomical because the seam of coal lies so far beneath the surface.

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Strip mining- process

□ First removes the overlying vegetation, topsoil and underground rock layers in
order to expose and extract coal from an underground seam or coal deposit.
• Responsible surface mining steps:
□ The exposed overburden is then usually drilled and blasted, and removed by
bulldozers, etc. depending on the amount of overburden and the type of mining.
□ After removing the overburden, the exposed coal seam is usually fractured by
blasting.
□ The operator then loads the fractured coal onto trucks or conveyor belts and
hauls it away.

Underground mining

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Mining environmental impact

Coal (cont.)

• Environmental effects
• Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels
• Environmental problems are associated with its mining, cleaning, combustion, and
disposal
• Coal mining is hazardous
• Strip mining degrades a property’s commercial and scenic value
• Mountain-top removal (MTR) mining involves disposing of removed material in valleys,
which results in radically changed stream drainage patterns

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Coal (cont.)

• Rock-waste dump piles

• Very high permeability to water
• Typically expose pyrite present in the sediments, which can react with oxygenated
rainwater and produce sulfuric acid: FeS2 + H2O +2O2 → H2SO4 + FeO
• Sulfuric acid leads to acid mine drainage, which can enter the local water supply,
decreasing the pH of lakes and streams, killing off fish and aquatic organisms

Coal (cont.)

• Burning coal
• Exhaust gas and residue can lead to acid rain, smog, nitrous oxide emissions, global
warming CO2 emissions, and toxic mercury emissions
• Thousands of coal seam fires are burning underground and are almost impossible to
extinguish
• Clean coal technologies
• Coal washing
• Combusting coal in nearly pure oxygen
• Gasification of coal

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Impact of Coal Mining

• Land disturbances from open-pit and strip mining

• Mining area acid drainage

• Subsidence over subsurface mines

• Surface water and groundwater pollution

• Air pollution from thermoelectric power plant

• Area ecosystem degradation due to mining practice and afterward

inadequate land reclamation

Future Use and Environmental Impacts of Coal

• More and more land will be strip mined
• Disposal of coal ash (5–20 percent of original coal)
• Mining, processing, disposal of mining waste, shipping,
burning, and disposing of ash: All potentially adverse to
environment
• Fly ash, from burning finely ground coal in a power
plant, hazardous
• The use of coal releasing huge amounts of carbon
dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere
• China, the United States, and Russia: The major carbon
dioxide contributors

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Peat Resources
• Peat
• Partially decayed, somewhat
compacted vegetation that forms
in bogs, moors, and peat swamp
forests
• It can be burned and is therefore
an energy source
Figure: Conifer marsh in foreground
• Most extensively used for where
horticultural purposes accumulating organic matter is
producing a thick peat-rich
layer of sediment.

© Aleksander Bolbot/ShutterStock, Inc.

Peat Resources (cont.)

• Harvested on a large scale in Ireland and Finland for fuel

• Research is underway to convert peat into methane gas by bacterial digestion and by
thermal decomposition
• In Europe, peat fuel is produced in Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Latvia, Estonia, and
Lithuania
• Benefits of peat fuel
• Low sulfur content, minimal mercury content, low ash content, and is a source of local
employment

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Acid mine drainage

• Acid rock drainage (ARD) or acid mine drainage (AMD) refers to the
acidic water that is created when sulphide minerals are exposed to air
and water and, through a natural chemical reaction, produce
sulphuric acid.
• AMD comes mainly from abandoned coal mines and currently active
mining.

AMD

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Acid mine drainage

AMD
• The metals dissolved by the acid drainage poison downstream waters,
in many cases to the point where nothing other than microbes can
survive

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AMD-Geology and Chemistry

• Copper, gold, lead, silver, zinc, and other desirable metals are often
found in ores rich in iron sulfide-under locked away condition
• Extracting the valuable metals from these rocks, however, involves
extracting and crushing the ore. This makes the ore more “chemically
available” for acid-forming reactions.
• Metals mining produces waste rock and mine tailings with a surface
area that is vastly greater than the undisturbed rock. The increase in
surface area of the sulfide rock by sever orders of factor will increase
the rate of acid formation

AMD – Environmental Impacts

• pH can be 3.6
• Many river systems are inhospitable to aquatic life
• Increased release of toxic metals

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Acid mine drainage-prevention

• Strategies for keeping tailings separate from oxygen include
submerging the tailings under still water, sealing them behind a
synthetic barrier, or burying them underground.
• The water flowing out from waste ponds still needs to be treated to
neutralize acidity before it is released into the environment.

AMD - prevention
• Active water treatment consists of using bases (alkali compounds)
such as hydrated lime, sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate or
ammonia to reduce the acidity directly.

• Another potentially promising option is the use of "bioreactors"

which utilize sulfate-reducing bacteria to precipitate out dissolved
metals.

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Natural Gas

Natural Gas

• Third largest component of the world’s supply of energy after crude

oil and coal
• Most often found as a product of the generation of petroleum in the
earth (conventional natural gas)
• Also associated with some coal (coal bed methane)
• Is formed from bacterial modification of near surface organic matter (marsh
gas)

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Natural Gas

• Conventional natural gas

• Consists primarily of a mixture of hydrocarbons
of short length that remain as gases at ~20° C

• Natural gas concentrations are typically

reported in cubic feet (cf) at standard
temperature and pressure (OPEC and U.S.: 60°
F and 1 atmosphere)

Table: Range of concentrations of

Author gases in natural gas before refining.

Natural Gas (cont.)

• Unconventional natural gas

• Difficult and more expensive to extract,
but with modern technology are
starting to be tapped
• Occur in a large number of countries

Figure: Unconventional natural gas fields in

Europe.

Modified from World Energy Outlook 2012 -

Special Report - Golden Rules for a Golden Age
of Gas © OECD/IEA 2012, figure 3.7, page 121

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Natural Gas (cont.)

• Deep gas
• Occurs at depths greater than 6 km below the surface
• Makes drilling more expensive
• Found in the U.S. in places such as the Louisiana-Texas Gulf Basin, Rocky Mountain
Basins, and Permian Basin
• Tight gas
• Present in unusually impermeable rock
• Most is present in shale and has not escaped due to the shale’s low permeability

Natural Gas (cont.)

Figure: Unconventional natural

gas fields in North America.

Modified from World Energy Outlook 2012 -

Special Report - Golden Rules for a Golden Age
of Gas © OECD/IEA 2012, figure 3.1, page 103

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Natural Gas (cont.)

• Hydrofracturing (fracking)
• Used to increase gas flows
• Increases fluid pressure in the well to a value in excess of the stresses needed to open
microfractures in the rocks in producing layers
• About 25% of the fluid is lost into the shale and about 75% flows back up to the top of
the well
• There is concern that the chemicals in fracking fluids may contaminate drinking water
aquifers, and that fracking fluid stored onsite in pits may overflow during a large
rainstorm

Natural Gas (cont.)

• Coal bed methane

• Natural gas produced during the maturation of coal
• Can be released by fracturing of the coal when mined, but at high concentration can be
explosive
• Captured in wells drilled into fractured coal by lowering the fluid pressure with removal
of formation water
• Gas from methane bubbles is collected, compressed, and stored in tanks
• Some concern because a large of formation water must be disposed of

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Natural Gas (cont.)

Coal bed methane

• Disposal of salty water that is produced with the methane
• Use of groundwater resources that could otherwise be used for
agriculture
• Migration of methane (a flammable, explosive gas) away from well
sites
• Reduction of crop production, if salty water is used to irrigate crops
• Pollution of stream water and loss of spring flow as groundwater is
extracted and disposed mine water enters streams and rivers
• Erosion and runoff of land disturbed for roads, well sites, processing,
and transportation of methane

Natural Gas (cont.)

• Geopressured gas
• Occurs in underground formations
• Reservoirs tend to be deep and the high fluid pressures make them difficult and less
economic to extract
• Methane clathrates
• Lattice of frozen water around a molecule of methane in a cage-like structure
• Found in permafrost below the earth’s surface and in cold deep-sea sediments on the
continental slopes
• Not economically recovered to date

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Natural Gas (cont.)

• Production and reserves
• Natural gas is first processed to
remove liquid water and any
liquid hydrocarbon
condensates
• Liquid hydrocarbons are sent to
an oil refinery for processing
while the remaining gas is
directed to a gas processing plant
• World reserves

Figure: World reserves of

conventional natural gas in trillions
(1012) of standard cubic feet.

Data from: BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2012.

Natural Gas composition and refining

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Natural Gas (cont.)

• It has been argued that with the exploitation of

nonconventional reserves, peak natural gas will not occur
until 2090

Figure: World gas production to 2010

and estimated future world production
from conventional and non-
conventional sources to 2140.

Adapted from Odell, P. R., 2004, Why carbon fuels

will dominate the 21st centuries global energy
economy, Multi-science publishing, 192 p.

Natural Gas (cont.)

• U.S. consumption reached 24.4
Tcf in 2011
• World consumption is expected
to increase by more than 40%
from 2010 through 2030

Figure: U.S. natural gas production by source

Modified from the U.S. Energy Information from 1990 to 2035 showing the % of supply
Administration, AEO2012, Jan. 23, 2012
from each source at the end of 2010.

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Natural Gas (cont.)

• Hydrogen gas production

• Fossil fuel is currently the main source
• At 700° to 1100 ° C in the presence of a nickel catalyst, steam reacts with methane to
yield carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas: CH4 + H2O → CO + 3H2
• Uses of hydrogen gas
• Fuel source
• Creation of ammonia (NH3)
• Fertilizer production
• Hydrogenating broken carbon chains during cracking

All the best for MTE….

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