Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel on Earth. Its predominant use has always been for producing heat energy. It was the basic energy source that fueled the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the industrial growth of that era in turn supported the large-scale exploitation of coal deposits. Since the mid-20th century, coal has yielded its place to petroleum and natural gas as the principal energy supplier of the world. The mining of coal from surface and underground deposits today is a highly productive, mechanized operation.

There is archaeological evidence that coal was burned in funeral pyres during the Bronze Age, 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, in Wales. Aristotle mentions coal (“combustible bodies”) in his Meteorologica, and his pupil Theophrastus also records its use. The Romans in Britain burned coal before AD 400; cinders have been found among the ruins of Roman villas and towns and along the Roman wall, especially in Northumberland, near the outcrop of coal seams. The Hopi Indians of what is now the southwestern United States mined coal by picking and scraping and used it for heating, cooking, and in ceremonial chambers as early as the 12th century AD; in the 14th century they used it industrially in pottery making. Marco Polo reports its use as widespread in 13th-century China. The Domesday Book (1086), which recorded everything of economic value in England, does not mention coal. London's first coal arrived by sea in 1228, from the areas of Fife and Northumberland, where lumps broken from submarine outcroppings and washed ashore by wave action were gathered by women and children. Thereafter, the name sea coal was applied to all bituminous coal in England. Later in the century, monks began to mine outcroppings in the north of England.

Except for the Chinese, who may have mined coal underground, all the early coal seams were worked from the surface, in fully exposed outcroppings. In the later Middle Ages, however, exhaustion of outcrop coal in many places forced a change from surface to underground, or shaft, mining. Early shaft mines were little more than wells widened as much as miners dared in the face of danger of collapse. Shafts were sunk on high ground, with adits—near-horizontal tunnels—for drainage driven into the side of the hill. In England some shallow mine shafts were exhausted as early as the 14th century, making it necessary to go deeper and expand mining at the shaft bottoms. These remained small operations; a record of 1684 shows 70 mines near Bristol, employing 123 workers. Greater depth created many problems. First, water could no longer simply be drained away. Crude methods were devised to lift it to the surface. A bucket-and-chain device was first powered by men and later by horses; a continuous belt of circular plates was drawn up through a pipe. Windmills were used for pumps. But shafts had to be restricted to depths of 90 to 105 metres (300 to 350 feet) and a mining radius of 180 metres. It was not until 1710 that the water problem was eased by Thomas Newcomen's steam atmospheric engine, which supplied a cheap and reliable power source for a vertical reciprocating lift pump.

Raising the coal itself was another problem. Manpower, operating a windlass, was replaced by horsepower; and, as the shafts went deeper, more horses were added. At Whitehaven in 1801, coal was hoisted 180 metres by four horses at the rate of 42–44 metric tons (46–48 tons) in nine hours. The introduction of the steam engine to hoist coal was a major turning point for the industry. Small steam-powered windlasses were successfully tried out about 1770. About 1840 the first cage was used to hoist the loaded car; and from 1840 onward advances in coal-mining techniques were rapid.

The presence of noxious and flammable gases caused miners to recognize the critical importance of ventilation in coal mines from the earliest days. Natural ventilation was afforded by level drainage tunnels driven from the sloping surface to connect with the shaft. Surface stacks above the shaft increased the efficiency of ventilation; their use continued in small mines until the early 20th century. The most reliable method, before the introduction of fans, was the use of a furnace at the shaft bottom or on the surface. Despite the hazard of fire and explosion, there were still a large number of furnaces operating, at least in nongassy mines, in the early 20th century.

Open-flame illumination, however, was a much more common cause of explosions until the introduction of the Davy safety lamp (Davy lamp) (about 1815), in which the flame is enclosed in a double layer of wire gauze that prevents ignition of flammable gases in the air of the mine. Presence of strong air currents, however, made even the Davy lamp unsafe.

Rotary ventilating fans (fan) were introduced in mines in the 18th century. Originally of wood and powered by steam, they were improved throughout the 19th and 20th centuries by the introduction of steel blades, electric power, and aerodynamically efficient shapes for the blades.

Early European miners wedged coal out of the seam or broke it loose with a pick. After explosives were introduced, it was still necessary to undercut the coal seam with hand tools. The advent of steam, compressed air, and electricity brought relief from this hard, dangerous work. In 1868, after almost 100 years of trial and error, a commercially successful revolving-wheel cutter for undercutting the coal seam was introduced in England. This first powered cutting tool was soon improved by introduction of compressed air as a power source in place of steam. Later, electricity was used. The longwall cutter was introduced in 1891. Originally driven by compressed air and later electrified, it could begin at one end of a long face (the vertical, exposed cross section of a seam of coal) and cut continuously to the other.

The conventional mining techniques described above, made up of the cyclic operations of cutting, drilling, blasting, and loading, developed in association with room-and-pillar mining. The oldest of the basic underground methods, room-and-pillar mining grew naturally out of the need to recover more coal as mining operations became deeper and more expensive. During the late 1940s, conventional techniques began to be replaced by single machines, known as continuous miners, that broke off the coal from the seam and transferred it back to the haulage system. The Joy Ripper (1948) was the first continuous miner applicable to the room-and-pillar method.

The other principal method of modern mining, longwall mining, had been introduced as early as the 17th century and had found general use by the 19th century, but it had long been less productive than room-and-pillar mining. This began to change in the 1940s, when a continuous system involving the “plow” was developed by Wilhelm Loebbe of Germany. Pulled across the face of the coal and guided by a pipe on the face side of a segmented conveyor, the plow carved a gash off the bottom of the seam. The conveyor snaked against the face behind the advancing plow to catch the coal that chipped off from above the gash. Substantially reducing the labour required at the coal face (except that needed to install roof support), the Loebbe system quickly became popular in Germany, France, and the Low Countries.

The plow itself had limited application in British mines, but the power-advanced segmented conveyor became a fundamental part of equipment there, and in 1952 a simple continuous machine called the shearer was introduced. Pulled along the face astride the conveyor, the shearer bore a series of disks fitted with picks on their perimeters and mounted on a shaft perpendicular to the face. The revolving disks cut a slice from the coal face as the machine was pulled along, and a plow behind the machine cleaned up any coal that dropped between the face and the conveyor.

The technique of supporting the roof by rock bolting (rock bolt) became common in the late 1940s and did much to provide an unobstructed working area for room-and-pillar mining, but it was a laborious and slow operation that prevented longwall mining from realizing its potential. In the late 1950s, however, powered, self-advancing roof supports were introduced by the British. Individually or in groups, these supports, attached to the conveyor, could be hydraulically lowered, advanced, and reset against the roof, thus providing a prop-free area for equipment (between the coal face and the first row of jacks) and a canopied pathway for miners (between the first and second rows of jacks).

In the first shaft mines, coal was loaded into baskets that were carried on the backs of men or women or loaded on wooden sledges or trams that were then pushed or hauled through the main haulage roadway to the shaft bottom to be hung on hoisting ropes or chains. In drift and slope mines, the coal was brought directly to the surface by these and similar methods. Sledges were pulled first by men and later by animals, including mules, horses, oxen, and even dogs and goats.

Steam (steam engine) locomotives designed by Richard Trevithick (Trevithick, Richard) were used in the fields of South Wales and Tyne and later in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but they created too much smoke. Compressed-air locomotives, which appeared in the 1880s, proved expensive to operate. Electric locomotives, introduced in 1887, rapidly became popular, but mules and horses were still working in some mines as late as the 1940s.

The loading by hand of broken coal into railcars was made obsolete early in the 20th century by mobile loaders. The Stanley Header, the first coal-loading machine used in the United States, was developed in England and tested in Colorado in 1888. Others were developed, but few progressed beyond the prototype stage until the Joy machine was introduced in 1914. Employing the gathering-arm principle, the Joy machine provided the pattern for future successful mobile loaders. After the introduction in 1938 of electric-powered, rubber-tired shuttle cars designed to carry coal from the loading machine to the elevator, mobile loading and haulage rapidly supplanted track haulage at the face of room-and-pillar mines.

In 1924 a conveyor belt was successfully used in an anthracite mine in central Pennsylvania to carry coal from a group of room conveyors to a string of cars at the mine entry. By the 1960s belts had almost completely replaced railcars for intermediate haulage.

The history of coal preparation begins in the 19th century, with the adaptation of mineral-processing methods used for enriching metallic ores from their associated impurities. In the early years, larger pieces of coal were simply handpicked from pieces composed predominantly of mineral matter. Washing with mechanical devices to separate the coal from associated rocks on the basis of their density differences began during the 1840s.

At first, coal preparation was necessitated by the demand for higher heating values; another demand was for such special purposes as metallurgical coke for steelmaking. In recent years, as concern has grown over the emission of sulfur dioxide in the flue gases of power plants, coal preparation has taken on greater importance as a measure to remove atmospheric pollutants.

In geologic terms, coal is a sedimentary rock containing a mixture of constituents, mostly of vegetal origin. Vegetal matter is composed mainly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and some inorganic mineral elements. When this material decays under water, in the absence of oxygen, the carbon content increases. The initial product of this decomposition process is known as peat. Peat can be formed in bogs, marshes, or freshwater swamps, and in fact huge freshwater swamps of the geologic past provided favourable conditions for the formation of thick peat deposits that over time became coal deposits. The transformation of peat to lignite is the result of pressure exerted by sedimentary materials that accumulate over the peat deposits. Even greater pressures and heat from movements of the Earth's crust (as occurs during mountain building), and occasionally from igneous intrusion, cause the transformation of lignite to bituminous and anthracite coal.

Coal deposits are known to have formed more than 400 million years ago. Most anthracite and bituminous coals occur within the 286- to 360-million-year-old strata of the Carboniferous Period, the so-called first coal age. The formation of coal deposits continued through the Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic periods into the “second coal age,” which includes the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Coals of the Cretaceous Period (144 million to 66.4 million years ago) are generally in the high-volatile to medium-volatile bituminous ranks. Tertiary coals, formed less than 100 million years ago, are predominantly of the subbituminous and lignitic ranks.

The rank of a coal indicates the progressive changes in carbon, volatile matter, and probably ash and sulfur that take place as coalification progresses from the lower-rank lignite through the higher ranks of subbituminous, high-volatile bituminous, low-volatile bituminous, and anthracite. The rank of a coal should not be confused with its grade. A high rank (e.g., anthracite) represents coal from a deposit that has undergone the greatest degree of devolatilization and contains very little mineral matter, ash, and moisture. On the other hand, any rank of coal, when cleaned of impurities through coal preparation, will be of a higher grade.

Coal deposits are found in sedimentary rock basins, where they appear as successive layers, or seams, sandwiched between strata of sandstone and shale. There are more than 2,000 coal-bearing sedimentary basins distributed around the world. World coal resources—that is, the total amount of coal available in the world—are approximately 11 trillion tons. The distribution of the estimated coal resources of the world is approximately as follows: Europe (including Russia and the former Soviet republics) 49 percent; North America 29 percent; Asia 14 percent; Australia 6 percent; and Africa and South America 1 percent each. Distinct from coal resources are coal reserves, which are only those resources that are technically and economically minable at a particular time. The current recoverable coal reserves of the world are estimated at 760 billion tons. Their distribution by continent is: Europe 44 percent; North America 28 percent; Asia 17 percent; Australia 5 percent; Africa 5 percent; and South America 1 percent.

Among the most important factors that influence the movement of a coal deposit from a resource to a reserve or vice versa are the price of coal in the energy market and the costs of producing the coal for that market. Currently, seams less than 30 centimetres (1 foot) in thickness are not considered economically recoverable. Furthermore, extraction from seams at great depth—i.e., over 1,000 metres (3,300 feet)—presents great difficulties. Other geologic features, such as excessively steep seams, extensive faulting and folding, washouts created by erosion and sedimentation, and burnout of the coal seams by igneous intrusion, all affect the amount and quality of coal that can be recovered from a seam.

The fundamental objective of coal prospecting is to discover coal resources through a search. In areas where coal mining has not been previously practiced, the search process should result in obtaining coal samples that give reasonable evidence of the existence of a coal seam. Once a seam has been discovered, considerable further work is necessary in order to advance knowledge of the particular geologic aspects and the extent of the coal deposit. The term coal exploration is used to describe these activities. Coal exploration includes activities and evaluations necessary to gather data for making decisions on such issues as the desirability of further exploration, the technical feasibility of mining (including favourable and unfavourable factors), and economic feasibility (including size of mine, coal quality assessment, marketability, and preparation of mined coal for market requirements).

Geologic mapping is an important task in exploration. Mapping involves compiling detailed field notes on coal seams, strata above and below the seam, rock types, geologic structures, stream data, and man-made structures. Good maps and mapping techniques provide a means for planning and accomplishing exploration, development, reclamation, day-to-day operations, and equipment moves. Calculation of material volumes, location of physical elements, and determination of mining conditions are expedited by the use of maps. Maps also provide a method for recording data so that they can be organized and analyzed for ready reference.

Drilling is the most reliable method of gathering information about a coal deposit and the mining conditions. It provides physical samples of the coal and overlying strata for chemical and physical analysis.

Numerous factors are associated with a drilling program. One is the spatial pattern of the holes in an exploration area. When very large areas are being studied, hole spacings vary greatly and generally are not in any set pattern. When the program is narrowed to a specific target area, a grid pattern is most common. In areas where coal is known to exist, closely spaced drill-hole patterns are required.

A second factor associated with a drilling program is the choice between core drilling and rotary drilling. In core drilling, a hollow drill bit is attached to a core barrel so that cylindrical samples of the strata can be obtained. (Since the drill bit is faceted with diamonds for cutting the strata, this method is also called diamond core drilling.) Photographing the cores as they come out of the hole can provide data of great reliability. In rotary drilling, the samples obtained are the chips and pulverized rock produced by the abrasive and chipping action of the drill bit. Rotary drilling is faster and comparatively less expensive than core drilling. In fact, it is not uncommon to drill down to the top of the coal seam by rotary drilling and then replace the drill tools for core drilling. In most programs, only 10 to 25 percent of the holes are actually cored for detailed information on overlying strata and coal. Coring of the coal seam itself, however, should closely approach 100 percent; if it does not, the analytical information obtained should be considered suspect.

Exploration of coal outcrops may be accomplished with dozer cuts at regular intervals. Dozer cutting provides information on the attitude of the coal and on the nature of the overburden—important factors with regard to machine operation.

In geophysical exploration, the seismic, electric, magnetic, radiometric, and gravitational properties of earth materials are measured in order to detect anomalies that may be caused by the presence of mineral deposits. Their form of exploration may begin with airborne methods in regional and target-area investigations and continue with on-ground methods during detailed investigations. The most widely utilized airborne methods are, in increasing order of use, magnetic, magnetic plus radiometric, magnetic plus electromagnetic, and electromagnetic. These methods are almost always accompanied by aerial photography.

Ground geophysical methods have a major advantage over the airborne methods in that they are in direct contact with the earth. The principal methods are electrical, magnetic, electromagnetic, radiometric, gravimetric, and refraction-seismic. The drill-hole geophysical survey, called logging, is an important method of extending data acquisition beyond the drill hole. A combination of logging methods is advantageous: gamma-ray and density logging for identifying the type of coal present; gamma-ray (radiometric), resistivity (electric), and calliper logs for determining the thickness of the seam; and sonic and density logs for determining the condition of the roof and floor strata.

The various methods of mining a coal seam can be classified under two headings, surface mining and underground mining. Surface and underground coal mining are broad activities that incorporate numerous variations in equipment and methods, and the choice of which method to use in extracting a coal seam depends on many technological, economic, and social factors. The technological factors include, at a minimum, the number of seams, the thickness and steepness of each seam, the nature and thickness of the strata overlying the seams, the quality of the coal seams, the surface topography, the surface features, and the transportation networks available. Economic factors include energy demand and its growth, the supply and cost of alternative sources of energy, coal quality and the cost of coal preparation, the selling price of coal, advancements in technology that affect costs of production, and environmental legislation. Social factors include prior history of mining in the area, ownership patterns, availability of labour, and local or regional government support.

It is a general rule that technological factors dictate a clear choice between surface and underground mining, whereas economic and social factors determine whether a coal reserve will be mined at all. Some coal reserves, however, are surface-mined first and then deep-mined when the coal seam extends to such great depths that it becomes uneconomical to continue with surface mining. The point where it becomes economically necessary to switch from one method to the other can be calculated with the aid of stripping ratios.

In the physical sense, a stripping ratio is the volume of strata overlying the coal in a specific area of the seam, expressed as follows:

By factoring in the cost of recovering a ton of coal from the seam by surface mining and the cost of recovering the same ton by underground mining, one arrives at a break-even stripping ratio:

TBundergroundTLsurface mining andTL

TBmining costTL-TLreclamation costTL

TBbreak-evenTLper ton of coalTLper ton of coalTL

TBstrippingTL=TLTLRT .TL

TBratio (BSR1)TLsurface-mining cost per cubic metreTM

TBof strata above the coal seamTM

TE

A third stripping ratio is calculated by including the selling price of coal in the equation. It is also called the break-even stripping ratio:

TBsales realizationTLcost of producingTL

TBper ton of coalTL-TLand marketingTL

TBbreak-evenTLper ton of coalTL

TBstrippingTL=TLTLRT .TL

TBratio (BSR2)TLsurface-mining cost per cubic metreTM

TBof strata above the coal seamTM

TE

Finally, a certain minimum profit can be added to the total cost of producing and marketing a ton of coal in order to calculate a new stripping ratio:

Analysis of world coal production indicates that contributions from surface and underground production are approximately equal. Anthracite seams (less than 10 percent of world coal production) are generally mined by underground methods, whereas lignite seams (25 percent) are most often surface-mined. Bituminous seams (approximately 65 percent) are mined in roughly equal proportions by both methods.

Surface coal mining generally involves the following sequence of unit operations: (1) clearing the land of trees and vegetation, (2) removing and storing the top layers of the unconsolidated soil (topsoil), (3) drilling the hard strata over the coal seam, (4) fragmenting or blasting the hard strata with explosives, (5) removing the blasted material, exposing the coal seam, and cleaning the top of the coal seam, (6) fragmenting the coal seam, as required, by drilling and blasting, (7) loading the loose coal onto haulage conveyances, (8) transporting the coal from the mine to the plant, and (9) reclaiming lands affected by the mining activity.

Surface techniques can be broadly classified into (1) contour strip mining, (2) area strip mining, (3) open-pit mining, and (4) auger mining.

Contour mining is commonly practiced where a coal seam outcrops in rolling or hilly terrain. Basically, the method consists of removing the overburden above the coal seam and then, starting at the outcrop and proceeding along the hillside, creating a bench around the hill. In the past, the blasted overburden spoil was simply shoved down the hill; currently, soil is either carried down the mountain to fill a chosen valley in horizontal layers or is replaced on the working bench itself in places where coal has been removed. If the break-even stripping ratio remains favourable, further cuts into the hillside will be made. Otherwise, if there are sufficient reserves under the knob of the hill, the coal may be recovered by underground mining or by augering.

Area mining, applied where the terrain is flat, commences with a trench or “box cut” made through the overburden to expose a portion of the coal seam. This trench is extended to the limits of the property in the strike direction. After coal removal, a second cut is made parallel to the first one, and the overburden material from this cut is placed in the void of the first cut. The process is repeated in successive parallel cuts until the stripping ratio indicates that continued surface mining is uneconomical.

In open-pit mining of the coal seam, several benches are established in both the overburden strata and the coal seam. The open-pit method is generally practiced where thick coal seams are overlain by thick or thin overburden; it is also used for mining steeply pitching coal seams. In the beginning stages of mining, considerable volumes of overburden materials must be accumulated in large dump areas outside the mine.

Auger mining is usually associated with contour strip mining. With this method, the coal is removed by drilling auger holes from the last contour cut and extracting it in the same manner that shavings are produced by a carpenter's bit. Coal recovery rates approach 60 percent with this method. The cutting heads of some augers (auger) are as high as 2.5 metres. As each stem works its way into the coal seam, additional auger stems are added, so that hole depths of more than 60 to 100 metres are not uncommon. Problems of subsidence, water pollution, and potential fires are associated with augering.

Highwall mining is an adaptation of auger mining. Instead of an auger hole, an entry into the coal seam is made by a continuous miner, remotely operated from a cabin at the surface. The cut coal is transported by conveyors behind the miner to the outside. Using a television camera, the operator can see and control the miner's progress. The entry can be advanced 300 to 400 metres into the coal seam, after which the miner is retreated to the surface and repositioned to drive an entry adjacent to the previous one. Advantages over augering include higher productivity, greater safety, and lower cost.

A variety of equipment is used in a surface mining operation. In land clearing, topsoil removal, and preparation of the mining area for subsequent unit operations, bulldozers (bulldozer) and scrapers (scraper) have extensive applications. These pieces of equipment have grown bigger and better over the years. Currently, scrapers for rock have bucket capacities of 33 cubic metres (1,165 cubic feet; about 47 tons of material), and scrapers for coal have capacities of 43 cubic metres (37 tons). Bulldozers have blade capacities up to 30 cubic metres.

Where strata are hard, drilling and blasting are necessary. Blastholes are generally drilled from the surface, are vertical, and vary in diameter from 25 to 100 centimetres. In some mines, horizontal holes are drilled into the overburden with the drill sitting on the coal surface. The holes are charged with explosives that are based on a mix of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO) in dry mix, slurry, or emulsion form. It is common to have a bulk-explosive truck drive into the area where holes have been drilled to fill holes with custom-designed explosive mixtures.

Overburden removal is the most important operation in the system. When the haul distances are small (for example, 500 to 1,000 metres) and the overburden material soft, a fleet of scrapers can load, haul, and dump the overburden. Where distances are very small (for example, 30 to 40 metres), mobile front-end loaders, or wheel loaders, may be used to load, haul, and dump. At greater haul distances, a fleet of trucks may be necessary, the trucks being loaded by front-end loaders.

Three types of shovel (power shovel) are currently used in mines: the stripping shovel, the loading (or quarry-mine) shovel, and the hydraulic shovel. The hydraulic mining shovel has been widely used for coal and rock loading since the 1970s. The hydraulic system of power transmission greatly simplifies the power train, eliminates a number of mechanical components that are present in the loading shovel, and provides good crowding and breakout forces. Hydraulic and loading shovels are available with capacities up to and over 30 cubic metres. The capacity of the loading shovel is carefully matched with the haul unit into which the load will be dumped. In open-pit (open-pit mining) coal mines, the haul units for overburden material are usually large, off-highway, end-dumping trucks; their capacities range from 35 to 250 tons. The stripping shovel has a large bucket, usually sits in the pit on the top of the coal seam, digs into the overburden material, and deposits it in the adjacent mined-out area.

Draglines are by far the most commonly used overburden-removal equipment in surface coal mining. A dragline sits on the top of the overburden, digs the overburden material directly in front of it, and disperses the material over greater distances than a shovel. Compared with shovels, draglines provide greater flexibility, work on higher benches, and move more material per hour. The largest dragline in operation has a bucket capacity of 170 cubic metres.

The bucket-wheel excavator (BWE) is a continuous excavation machine capable of removing up to 12,000 cubic metres per hour. The most favourable soil and strata conditions for BWE operation are soft, unconsolidated overburden materials without large boulders. BWEs are widely employed in lignite mining in Europe, Australia, and India. In these mines, the wheel excavators deposit the overburden and coal materials onto high-speed, high-capacity belt conveyors for transport to the mined-out areas of the pit and the coal stockpile, respectively. In the United States, wheel excavators have been used in combination with shovels or draglines, with a wheel handling soft topsoil and clay layers and a shovel or dragline removing hard strata.

Coal is usually loaded by front-end loaders, loading shovels, or wheel excavators into off-highway, bottom-dump trucks for transport to the stockpile. In small operations, it can be loaded into on-highway trucks for direct shipment to customers. In some open-pit operations with BWEs, rail haulage is practiced in the benches themselves, coal and overburden being loaded directly into railcars by the wheel excavator. Nevertheless, in BWE operations belt haulage is preferable, as it facilitates continuous mining.

Equipment used in reclaiming mined lands includes bulldozers, scrapers, graders, seeders, and other equipment used extensively in agriculture. Reclamation operations, which include backfilling the last cut after coal removal, regrading the final surface, and revegetating and restoring the land for future use, are integrated with the mining operation in a timely manner in order to reduce erosion and sediment discharge, slope instability, and water-quality problems.

A primary goal of reclamation is to restore or enhance the land-use capability of disturbed land. Various reclamation programs aim at restoring the ground for farming and livestock raising, reforestation, recreation, and housing and industrial sites. Even spoil banks that can be revegetated present only minor problems and have great potential for development. There are, however, marginal and problem spoils (such as those containing acids or toxic wastes) that require special attention and additional planning.

In underground coal mining, the working environment is completely enclosed by the geologic medium, which consists of the coal seam and the overlying and underlying strata. Access to the coal seam is gained by suitable openings from the surface, and a network of roadways driven in the seam then facilitates the installation of service facilities for such essential activities as human and material transport, ventilation, water handling and drainage, and power. This phase of an underground mining operation is termed “mine development.” Often the extraction of coal from the seam during mine development is called “first mining”; the extraction of the remaining seam is called “second mining.”

Modern underground coal-mining methods can be classified into four distinct categories: room-and-pillar, longwall, shortwall, and thick-seam.

In this method, a number of parallel entries are driven into the coal seam. The entries are connected at intervals by wider entries, called rooms, that are cut through the seam at right angles to the entries. The resulting grid formation creates thick pillars of coal that support the overhead strata of earth and rock. There are two main room-and-pillar systems, the conventional and the continuous. In the conventional system, the unit operations of undercutting, drilling, blasting, and loading are performed by separate machines and work crews. In a continuous operation, one machine—the continuous miner—rips coal from the face and loads it directly into a hauling unit. In both methods, the exposed roof is supported after loading, usually by rock bolts.

Under favourable conditions, between 30 and 50 percent of the coal in an area can be recovered during development of the pillars. For recovering coal from the pillars themselves, many methods are practiced, depending on the roof and floor conditions. The increased pressure created by pillar removal must be transferred in an orderly manner to the remaining pillars, so that there is no excessive accumulation of stress on them. Otherwise, the unrecovered pillars may start to fail, endangering the miners and mining equipment. The general procedure is to extract one row of pillars at a time, leaving the mined-out portion, or gob, free to subside. While extraction of all the coal in a pillar is a desirable objective, partial pillar extraction schemes are more common.

At depths greater than 400 to 500 metres, room-and-pillar methods become very difficult to practice, owing to excessive roof pressure and the larger pillar sizes that are required.

Two main longwall systems are widely practiced. The system described above, known as the retreating method, is the most commonly used in the United States. In this method the block is developed to its boundary first, and then the block is mined back toward the main haulage tunnel. In the advancing longwall method, which is more common in Europe, development of the block takes place only 30 to 40 metres ahead of the mining of the block, and the two operations proceed together to the boundary.

In longwall mining, as in the room-and-pillar system, the safe transfer of roof pressures to the solid coal ahead of the face and to the caved roof behind the face is necessary. Caving of the overlying strata generally extends to the surface, causing surface subsidence. The subsidence over a longwall face is generally more uniform than it is over room-and-pillar workings. If conditions are such that the roof will not cave or subsidence to the surface is not allowable, it will be necessary to backfill the void with materials such as sand, waste from coal-preparation plants, or fly ash. Owing to technical and environmental reasons, backfilling is practiced in many mining countries (e.g., Poland, India), but the cost of production is much higher with backfilling than it is without.

In the shortwall mining method, the layout is similar to the longwall method except that the block of coal is not more than 100 metres wide. Furthermore, the slices are as much as three metres thick and are taken by a continuous miner. The mined coal is dumped onto a face conveyor or other face haulage equipment. The roof is supported by specially designed shields, which operate in the same manner as longwall shields. Although a great future was envisioned for shortwall mining, it has not lived up to expectations.

Coal seams as much as five metres thick can be mined in a single “lift” by the longwall method, and seams up to seven metres thick have been extracted by conventional mining systems in one pass. However, when a seam exceeds these thicknesses, its extraction usually involves dividing the seam into a number of slices and mining each slice with longwall, continuous, or conventional mining methods. The thickness of each slice may vary from three to four metres. Many variations exist in the manner in which the complete seam is extracted. The slices may be taken in ascending or descending order. If the roof conditions or spontaneous-combustion liability of the seam requires that there be no caving, the void created by mining will be backfilled. The backfill material then acts as an artificial floor or roof for the next slice. Caving is the preferred practice, however.

Thick coal seams containing soft coal or friable bands and overlain by a medium-to-strong roof that parts easily from the coal can be fragmented by a high-pressure water jet. For successful operation, the floor must not deteriorate through contact with water, and the seam gradient must be steep enough to allow the water to flush the broken coal from the mined areas. Under favourable conditions, hydraulic mining of coal is productive, safe, and economical. It has been employed experimentally within the United States and Canada, but it is practiced extensively in the Kuznetsk Basin (Kuznetsk Coal Basin) of Siberia for the extraction of multiseam, steeply pitching deposits. Here the water is also used to transport the coal from the working faces to a common point through open channels and from the common point to the surface through high-pressure hydraulic transportation systems.

Those activities which are essential to maintain safe and productive operating conditions both at the working faces and in all parts of the mine are known as auxiliary operations. These include ground control, ventilation, haulage, drainage, power supply, lighting, and communications. Those activities which are conducted sequentially in a production cycle—i.e., cutting and hauling the coal and supporting the immediate exposed roof after coal removal—are called unit operations. Unit operations are planned and conducted so as to use the auxiliary services most effectively for maintaining health and safety as well as productivity at the locations where coal is actually being mined.

Accesses to a coal seam, called portals, are the first to be completed and generally the last to be sealed. A large coal mine will have several portals. Their locations and the types of facilities installed in them depend on their principal use, whether for worker and material transport, ventilation, drainage and power lines, or emergency services. In many cases, the surface facilities near a portal include bathhouses and a lamp room; coal handling, storage, preparation, and load-out facilities; a fan house; water- and waste-handling systems; maintenance warehouses; office buildings; and parking lots.

There are three types of portal: drift, slope, and shaft. Where a coal seam outcrops to the surface, it is common to drive horizontal entries, called drifts, into the coal seam from the outcrop. Where the coal seam does not outcrop but is not far below the surface, it is accessed by driving sloping tunnels through the intervening ground. Slopes are driven at as steep an angle as is practicable for transporting coal by belt. Commonly, a pair of slopes is driven (or a slope is divided into two separate airtight compartments) or ventilation and material transport. Where the minimum coal-seam depth exceeds 250 to 300 metres, it is common to drive vertical shafts. (Poor ground conditions are another factor in selecting a shaft over a slope.) Shafts, too, may be split into separate compartments for fresh air, return air, worker and supply transport, and coal haulage.

Capital and operating costs for coal haulage are lowest in a drift access. Capital investment for coal haulage in a shaft or a slope is somewhat similar, but operating costs are generally higher in a shaft, owing to the noncontinuous nature of shaft coal-handling facilities. It has been estimated that shafts and slopes, drifts, and permanent equipment in these access openings may account for more than 30 percent of the capital investment in a large mine.

Overall ground control—i.e., long-term stability of mine accesses and entries and subsidence control—can be regarded as an auxiliary operation, whereas supporting the roof at production faces (roof control) is a unit operation. Ground control is concerned with the design of underground entries, their widths, the distance between the entries, and the number of entries that can be driven as a set. A hierarchy of entries exists in underground coal mines. Main entries are driven so as to divide the property into major areas; they usually serve the life of the mine for ventilation and for worker and material transport. Submain entries can be regarded as feeders from the mains that subdivide each major area. From the submains, panel entries take off to subdivide further a block of coal into panels for orderly coal extraction.

In some cases, complete collapse of the overlying strata during extraction eventually travels to the surface, resulting in surface depressions. This effect is called subsidence. Clearly, the wider and more numerous the entries, the more effective they will be for ventilation, materials handling, and first-mining extraction percentage. However, with increased width may come problems in entry and pillar stability. Often, by limiting the first mining to a small fraction of the coal seam and by laying out large undisturbed blocks of coal, subsidence may be reduced. The science of rock mechanics is well advanced and is useful for understanding such stability problems and for the design of mine openings, pillar sizing, extraction techniques, and planned subsidence.

Additional supporting systems for entries (mains, submains, and panels) include temporary or permanent hydraulic or friction props, cribs (made of timber or reinforced concrete block), yieldable steel arches, and roof trusses.

Coal haulage, the transport of mined coal from working faces to the surface, is a major factor in underground-mine efficiency. It can be considered in three stages: face or section haulage, which transfers the coal from the active working faces; intermediate or panel haulage, which transfers the coal onto the primary or main haulage; and the main haulage system, which removes the coal from the mine. The fundamental difference between face, intermediate, and main haulages is that the last two are essentially auxiliary operations in support of the first. Face haulage systems must be designed to handle large, instantaneous production from the cutting machines, whereas the outer haulage systems must be designed to accommodate such surges from several operating faces. Use of higher-capacity equipment in combination with bins or bunkers is common. In addition, face haulage systems generally discharge onto ratio-feeders or feeder-breakers in order to even out the flow of material onto the intermediate systems and to break very large lumps of coal or rock to below a maximum size.

In room-and-pillar systems, electric-powered, rubber-tired vehicles called shuttle cars haul coal from the face to the intermediate haulage system. In some semimechanized or manual longwall operations, chain haulage is used, while the face haulage equipment of choice in modern mechanized longwall systems is an armoured face conveyor (AFC). In addition to carrying coal from the face, the AFC serves as the guide for the longwall shearer, which rides on it (see above, Mining methods: Longwall mining (coal mining)).

Intermediate haulage in coal mines is provided by panel belts or by mine cars driven by locomotives. Panel belts have widths ranging from 90 to 150 centimetres, the wider belts being used with longwall panels. The use of mine cars and locomotives requires detailed considerations of shuttle-car dumping ramps, locomotive switching requirements, the inventory of mine cars, and track layout for empties and loads. Locomotives are electric- or diesel-powered. Mainline haulage is also provided by belt or railcar. The major differences are only in the size, scope, and permanence of installations. For example, mainline belts are laid for the life of the mine and are much wider and faster than intermediate belts. Mainline locomotives are also much larger than intermediate locomotives, and mainline tracks are built to more exacting standards of speed and reliability.

For the transport of maintenance and operating supplies to the working sections, advantage is taken of the mainline, intermediate, and face haulage systems. Monorail systems or endless-rope haulage systems, which are much like ski lifts, are commonly used in intermediate and face systems to transport supplies to the working faces. In all-belt mines, it is not unusual to have trolley rail haulage for carrying workers and materials to and from the working face. Other supply haulage equipment includes scoops and battery- or diesel-powered trucks.

The primary purpose of underground-mine ventilation is to provide oxygen to the miners and to dilute, render harmless, and carry away dangerous accumulations of gases and dust. In some of the gassiest mines, more than six tons of air are circulated through the mine for every ton of coal mined. Air circulation is achieved by creating a pressure difference between the mine workings and the surface through the use of fans. Fresh air is conducted through a set of mine entries (called intakes) to all places where miners may be working. After passing through the workings, this air (now termed return air) is conducted back to the surface through another set of entries (called returns). The intake and return airstreams are kept separate. Miners generally work in the intake airstream, although occasionally work must be done in the return airways.

The task of bringing fresh air near the production faces is an important auxiliary operation, while the task of carrying this air up to the working faces—the locations of which may change several times in a shift—is the unit operation known as face ventilation. The major difference between main ventilation and face ventilation is the number and nature of the ventilation control devices (fans, stoppings, doors, regulators, and air-crossings). In face ventilation, plastic or plastic-coated nylon cloth is generally used to construct stoppings and to divide the air along a face into the two streams of intake and return air. Furthermore, the stoppings, which are generally hung from the roof, are not secured at the bottom, in case machinery and coal must be transported from one side to the other. Main ventilation stoppings and air crossings, on the other hand, are constructed of brick or blocks and coated with mortar; the fans, regulators, and doors are also of substantial construction.

Advancements in sensor technology and in computer hardware and software capabilities are finding increasing application in underground coal mines, especially in the monitoring and control of ventilation, haulage, and machine condition. Longwall shearers and shields can be remotely operated, and continuous miners have also been equipped with automatic controls. The atmospheric environment is remotely monitored for air velocity, concentrations of various gases, and airborne dust; fans and pumps are also monitored continuously for their operational status and characteristics.

In coal mining—particularly underground coal mining—there are numerous conditions that can threaten the health and safety of the miners. For this reason, coal mining worldwide is heavily regulated through health and safety laws. Through the development of new equipment for personnel protection, new approaches to mine design, more effective emergency preparedness plans and procedures, and major changes in legislation, regulation, and enforcement, higher standards of heath and safety are now achieved. For example, the self-contained self-rescuer (SCSR) represents a significant development in raising a miner's chances of survival and escape after an explosion, fire, or similar emergency contaminates the mine atmosphere with toxic gases. This lightweight, belt-wearable device is available worldwide and is mandated in several countries to be carried on the person whenever underground.

The effects of mining on the water, air, and land (environment) outside the mine are as important as those that occur in the mine. These effects may be felt both on- and off-site; in addition, they may vary in severity from simple annoyance and property damage to possibly tragic illness and death. Even abandoned lands from past mining activities present such problems as mine fires, precipitous slopes, waste piles, subsidence, water pollution, derelict land, and other hazards endangering general welfare and public health. Growing environmental consciousness has brought about a greater consideration of environmental factors in the planning, designing, and operating of mines.

As explained above, during the formation of coal and subsequent geologic activities, a coal seam may acquire mineral matter, veins of clay, bands of rock, and igneous intrusions. In addition, during the process of mining, a portion of the roof and floor material may be taken along with the coal seam in order to create adequate working height for the equipment and miners. Therefore, run-of-mine (ROM) coal—the coal that comes directly from a mine—has impurities associated with it. The buyer, on the other hand, may demand certain specifications depending on the intended use of the coal, whether for utility combustion, carbonization, liquefaction, or gasification. In very simple terms, the process of converting ROM coal into marketable products is called coal preparation.

Coal preparation results in at least two product streams, the clean coal product and the reject. Generally, five levels of preparation can be identified, each being an incremental level of cleaning over the previous one:

TPLevel 0:

At this level, no coal cleaning is done; ROM coal is shipped directly to the customer.

TPLevel 1:

ROM coal is crushed to below a maximum size; undesirable constituents such as tramp iron, timber, and perhaps strong rocks are removed; the product is commonly called raw coal.

TPLevel 2:

The product from level 1 is sized into two products: coarse coal (larger than 12.5 millimetres) and fine coal (less than 12.5 millimetres); the coarse coal is cleaned to remove impurities; the fine coal is added to the cleaned coarse coal or marketed as a separate product.

TPLevel 3:

Raw coal of less than 12.5 millimetres is sized into two products: an intermediate product (larger than 0.5 millimetre) and a product smaller than 0.5 millimetre; the intermediate product is cleaned to remove impurities; the smaller product is added to the cleaned intermediate product or marketed separately.

TPLevel 4:

Cleaning is extended to material less than 0.5 millimetre in size.

In the early days of coal preparation, the objective was to provide a product of uniform size and to reduce the content of inert rock materials in ROM coal. Reduction of impurities increased the heating value of the cleaned product, reduced deposits left on the furnace, reduced the load on the particle-removal system, and increased the overall operating performance of the furnace. Today, air-pollution regulations require that ROM coal be cleaned not only of ash and rocks but of sulfur as well. The processing of raw coals at levels 2, 3, and 4 therefore requires a maximized recovery of several characteristics (e.g., ash content, heating value, and sulfur content) in the respective product streams (i.e., clean coal and the reject). Four steps need to be considered: characterization, liberation, separation, and disposition.

Characterization is the systematic examination of ROM coal in order to understand fully the characteristics of the feed to the preparation plant. Washability studies are performed to determine how much coal can be produced at a given size and specific gravity and at a particular level of cleaning. The studies provide a basis for selecting the washing equipment and preparation-plant circuitry.

Liberation is the creation of individual particles that are more homogeneous in their composition as either coal or impurities. (In practice, middlings, or particles containing both coal and impurities, are also produced.) Liberation is achieved by size reduction of the ROM coal. It is a level-1 process, the product of which is the input to a level-2 plant. In general, the finer the ROM coal is crushed, the greater the liberation of impurities. However, the costs of preparation increase nonlinearly with decreasing desired size.

Disposition is the handling of the products of a preparation plant. The entire plant process includes ROM storage, raw coal storage, crusher house, screening plants, various slurries (coal-water mixtures), dewatering system, thickeners, thermal dryer, process-water systems, clean-coal storage, clean-coal load-out system, monitoring and process-control system, and refuse-disposal system. Occupational health and safety hazards as well as environmental problems are associated with each of these processes. Detailed planning and designing can eliminate the worst problems of noise, dust, and visual blight and can also significantly reduce adverse impacts on air, water, and land.

There are several methods for moving prepared coal from the mine to the markets. The cost of transport can be substantial and can account for a large fraction of the total cost to the consumer.

Rail transportation is by far the most common mode of hauling coal over long distances. Roadbed and track requirements and large fixed investment in railcars make rail transport capital-intensive. However, the long life of the permanent assets, relatively trouble-free operation with minimum maintenance, the large-volume shipments that are possible, the high mechanical efficiencies that are obtained with low rolling resistances, and the dedicated nature of the origin and destination of the runs are some of the factors that make rail transport most attractive for long-term, long-distance, high-volume movements of coal.

In the United States, about half of the coal carried by rail is transported by unit trains (unit train), groupings of 100 or more cars of 100- to 110-ton capacity each. Unit trains generally carry 10,000 to 15,000 tons of coal in a single shipment. A “dedicated unit train” is made up especially for movement between one point of origin and one destination. In order to attain high efficiency, carefully matched loading and unloading terminals are necessary. In one example, a unit train transporting 17,400 tons per 1,200-kilometre round trip from mine to plant has a turnaround time of 72 hours—including a 4-hour loading and 10-hour unloading and servicing time per train.

If haul distances and shipment sizes are small, it may be advantageous to transport coal by truck through a network of public roads. Whereas off-highway trucks have exceeded 250 tons in capacity, on-highway trucks are usually much smaller, not exceeding 25-ton payloads. Advantages over railroads are that trucks can negotiate more severe grades and curves, roads can be resurfaced or constructed more readily and with far lower capital investments than can railways, and the coal flow can be made continuous by adding new trucks and replacing failing trucks.

Rivers and lakes have long played a major role in the transport of bulk commodities like coal in Germany, The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Canada, and the United States. The costs of barge transport depend on the number of barges being towed by a single towboat; this in turn depends on the dimensions of the waterway. For example, the Cumberland, Ohio, Tennessee, and upper Mississippi rivers in the United States can take up to 20- to 25-barge tows, and the lower Mississippi can take 25- to 35-barge tows. Each barge has a capacity of up to 1,500 tons. Waterways are usually circuitous, resulting in slow delivery times. However, transport of coal on barges is highly cost-efficient.

While use of conveyors for carrying coal over long distances from producing to consuming centres is uncommon, it is not uncommon to find conveyors transporting coal from mines to barge-loading stations. In addition, where a power plant is in close proximity to a mine, conveyors are generally used to transport coal to the power plant stockpile. Conveyors can traverse difficult terrain with greater ease than trucks or rail systems, and they can also be extended easily and have the advantage of continuous transport. Conveyors with wide belts and high operating speeds can have enormous capacities, varying from 2,000 to 5,000 tons per hour.

Coal slurry is a mixture of crushed coal and a liquid such as water or oil. The traditional mixture, first patented in England in 1891, consists of 50 percent coal and 50 percent water by weight. So-called heavy coal slurries or slurry fuels consist of 65 to 75 percent coal, with the remainder being water, methanol, or oil. Unlike traditional slurry—which is transported by pipeline to the user, who separates the water from the coal before burning—slurry fuels can be fired directly into boilers.

Coal slurry pipelines currently in operation in the United States and Europe cover distances ranging from a few kilometres to several hundred kilometres. They have several advantages. A large portion—approximately 70 percent—of the costs involved in a slurry pipeline are invested in the initial construction of the line and pumping stations and are fixed for the life of the pipeline. Therefore, the total costs of moving slurry during the life of the line do not increase in proportion to inflation. The advantage over rail and truck transport is clear, as the costs of these latter modes escalate with inflation. Furthermore, pipelines require less right-of-way, much less labour, and about half of the steel and other supplies required for other transport methods.

On the other hand, slurry pipelines involve potential environmental problems. Water requirements are substantial: almost one ton of water is needed to move one ton of coal—an important issue in Australia and the western United States, where water supplies are scarce and its availability cannot be guaranteed. Other concerns focus on water pollution at the mouth of the pipeline as well as along its length. For this reason, efforts to obtain right-of-way to lay a pipeline have often faced legal and environmental challenges.

In the early 1960s, dedication of large coal reserves to mine-mouth power plants resulted in the development of huge complexes involving mining, preparation, and utility plants. Transportation of electricity from (electric power) coal-fired power plants to distant consuming centres is still attractive for several reasons. Coal is generally available in abundance and is the lowest-cost fuel in many instances. In addition, the search for inherently cleaner and more efficient ways to burn coal in electric utilities has intensified. The world's highest-voltage transmission line (1,150 kilovolts) transports electricity from Siberia to consumers in the western republics of the former Soviet Union—a distance of more than 3,000 kilometres. In the United States, coal-fired plants account for 50 percent of electricity generation. The U.S. electrical grid consists of three networks—one in the east, one in the west, and one in Texas. Although there are only small transfers between networks, the ability to transmit power from one network to another reveals the potential for greater use of electrical wire for coal power transport.

It is predicted that coal exports and, therefore, the importance of ocean transport will increase. Ocean transport of coal requires detailed considerations of (1) transportation from the mine to the port, (2) coal-handling facilities at the export port, (3) ocean carrier decisions such as number and size of ships, contractual obligations, management of the fleet, and route decisions, (4) coal-handling facilities at the importing port, and (5) transportation from the port to the customer.

Transportation costs have an important impact on coal exports. Mining, rail, port, and shipping costs may vary greatly for different overseas buyers, and the combined cost may represent more than one-half of the delivered price of coal to overseas ports. In addition, substantial capital costs are involved in developing the necessary facilities and in maintaining sizable stockpiles at the exporting ports. Since all these costs differ considerably among suppliers, they are important in determining the competitiveness of various coals in world markets.