lbj's coal formation blog

      Coal is formed when plant life is decayed in swamps 300 million years ago. When these plants died in the swamp they got buried underground with no oxygen and acidic/ anaerobic conditions prevent complete decay. When this happens it forms peat which is like a moss that has a low heat value but will eventually turn into coal over millions of years.

Brian Johnson's coal camp blog post

      Thurmond was built in 1885 used to be a coal town on the edge of the New River in Fayette County West Virginia. There is only 5 white people that live in the town today but back in the 1920’s it used to be booming coal town. Thurmond is owned by the National Park Service for the New River Gorge National River. When Thurmond had 285 people in 1920 it was mostly used from switching trains that came from the mines into trains that hauled coal through the mountains for many of miles. Thurmond was once the site of a Hollywood movie too. The 1987 movie Matewan was filmed right on Main Street since it is one of the last coal towns that looks almost exactly as it did almost 100 years ago. Although there are only 5 residents still living there and the coal town long shut down, long trains filled full with coal continuously pass threw Thurmond everyday.

Brian Johnson's surfaace mining blog

      There are three types of surface mining and the first one is strip mining. Strip mining is where they mine from the surface of the mountain down. The first step is deforestation where all trees and everything else is bulldozed down. Then they blow up the dirt and rock (over burden) and move it to valleys until they reach the coal seam in the earth. The advantages for strip mining are that it is easy, safer, and less expensive to extract from the ground. One big disadvantage is that it pollutes local steams and ecosystems. When it rains the water drains threw the loose dirt and extracts the minerals and washes them into streams causing many of problems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Contour mining is another method of surface mining in which they cut along the contour lines in the mountain. This type of mining is used when the slope of the mountain is really steep. Each time they take the overburden off they have to move it to a previously mined location. The disadvantages are landslides and erosion and the overburden to coal ratio. It is time to call it quits on the mining site when you have spend more on moving the overburden than you get from the coal. But some people do think that contour mining is good for West Virginia because of our big steep mountains.

 

 

      The last method of surface mining is the most controversial, mountaintop removal. Mountaintop removal is pretty self explanatory.  They literally take off the top off a mountain sometimes up to 400 feet to get to the coal seams underneath. The only good thing about it is that it is the most effective method of mining but has the most disadvantages.  No matter what the coal companies say the mountain will never be the same as it used to be. For one the mountain is chopped off and it causes extreme pollution to the area and put toxics into the watershed killing them.

Brian Johnson's underground coal notes

There are five different methods of underground coal mining. The first type is the most common type of mining in West Virginia and it is shaft mining. You have probably seen these types of mines before because the only way to get down into the mine is to take an elevator straight down usually past 1,000 feet.  The advantages to shaft mining are that we can get a lot of coal out of the mines with huge machines that do all of the work but the bad thing is that a massive mine explosion could happen if the company isn’t carful.

 

Drift mining- Drift mining is another method of coal mining where the opening of the mine is in the side of the mountain instead of drilling down into the ground when the coal seam meets the surface. The coal miners mine horizontally into the coal seam in the mountain.  Drift mining is one of the easiest ways to mine but it is always not the safest because of the danger of collapsing roofs.

 

 

 

 

Room and pillar mining is an underground mining method where they cut out sections of the coal and leave “pillars” in many “rooms” of coal in parts so the coal will support the roof. The bad thing about these types of mines is the nearly half of the coal that is used for the pillars is left behind and there is a constant danger of the roofs collapsing on top of the miners. In room and pillar mining they can use fewer men to extract coal they can use continuous machines that constantly cut coal out of the mounting without the use of multiple miners.  It is a huge machine that has rotating steel drum tungsten carbide teeth that move 5 tons of coal per minute. Continuous miners are used in drift mining and room and pillar mining and have been around since the 1940’s. Click here to see a continuous miner.

The last method of underground mining is the long wall technique.  This method is highly effective because there are hydraulics machines that hold the roof up while they mine the coal and then after they are all done they retreat and let the roof collapse on itself. It is high effective but dangers of roof collapses are still high. 

LBJ's coal notes

                In class we are learning about coal in Appalachia and how it is formed and all of its purposes. The coal we are mining right now is from the Pennsylvania period 300 million years ago when swampy plants got buried under the ground with no oxygen to decompose them.  This absence of oxygen prevents total decay and forms peat which is like a moss that has a low heat let off. A different kind of coal is lignite. Sometimes called brown coal, lignite is low carbon concentrated and is found in in Alaska and western states but has a low heat value. The most common coal is Bituminous coal. It has a high carbon value and burns really hot. This is what we have been mining in our mines for many years now.  The byproduct of burning coal is what is called coke and it is primarily used in the steel industry.

analizing surface temperature graph: brian johnson

In class we took surface temperature of different types of surfaces and took measurement on the aerosols in the air. We then made an excel and a graph on the data. The football field, asphalt and aerosol stayed the same through all of the dates that we took measurements. The percent transmission is how much sun light reaches the earth due to the amount of aerosols in the air rose drastically through the graph. Maybe this was because there was no clouds in the sky that day and nothing was prevent the suns radiation from reaches the earth’s surface.

 

lbjs aerosols blog

Aerosols have an indirect and direct effect on the climate. One direct effect would be how they reduce the amount of solar radiation that reaches the surface. This may offset global warming effects also. Another direct effect of aerosols would be volcanic eruptions that cover the sky in aerosols. Without aerosols we wouldn't have clouds because it is very hard for a cloud start forming when there are no small particles in the air for water droplets to form. This is how aerosols change the properties of clouds for an indirect effect on the climate.