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EducationThings I can do with coal?

11th Aug 2018 05:28 UTCSky Sanchez

I have a spot where I can dig up some coal chunks. They range from tiny to fist sized. Any use for it or a pulverized variant other than burning?

11th Aug 2018 05:35 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

You can distill a kind of tar out of it, which is the basis for some serious chemical industries (remember coal tar dyes? ...probably carcinogenic). And South Africans used to make gasoline out of it, though it was an expensive procedure. And some very compact varieties (like jet, or eastern Pennsylvania anthracite) have been carved and polished for lapidary purposes.

11th Aug 2018 07:10 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Some possibilities:


(i) Guess you can label it, add a catalogue no. and store it in a drawer with your other minerals !! :-)) ;

(ii) Create a coal mining display !! :-)) ;

(iii) Pulverise it and use it in scenery or as part of scale model coal mine in a model train display, fill a model coal tender etc !! :-)) ;

(iv) incorporate it into a piece of modern art ! :-)) ;

(v) photograph it and add it to Mindat;

(vi) as Alfredo said, if it is very compact you could carve/shape and even polish it.


I often dig up bits in my backyard ... but I just dig it back into the soil (reduces my carbon footprint !! :-)) )


On a more serious note, the following paper discusses a number of uses of coal, although you will need more than a handful of coal - a whole mine would help: (... :-)) ... )


https://www.usea.org/sites/default/files/052014_Non-fuel%20uses%20of%20coal_ccc236.pdf

11th Aug 2018 22:28 UTCAlysson Rowan Expert

There are a number of School Laboratory Experiments that used to be carried out using coal.


Town-gas production; methane production; coal-tar production, coking, hydrogen extraction, SO2 extraction etc.


Some grades of coal can be pulverised and used as a pigment.

Other grades may be cracked (by anaerobic heating and quenching) in order to produce a tarry wood preservative.

Crushed coal can be used as a mild abrasive for grit-blasting.

Finely crushed coal can be used as an inert colourant in concrete.


As Keith suggested. it can be used in model making. It doesn't work well as a filler/pigment in acrylic resins though.

28th Aug 2018 19:33 UTCMatt Ciranni

If you place a chunk of coal in a wood furnace that is hot enough, will it ignite, or does it need to be crushed or powdered first?

29th Aug 2018 02:00 UTCDoug Daniels

If there is enough heat available, it will ignite. That's how you start a coal-burning furnace (these use - or at least did when they were available - chunks of coal). My grandparents in Pennsylvania had coal-burning furnaces - you had to stoke the furnace (a few shovel loads of coal chunks) every so often if you wanted to stay warm.

29th Aug 2018 21:11 UTCOwen Lewis

Matt Ciranni Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> If you place a chunk of coal in a wood furnace

> that is hot enough, will it ignite, or does it

> need to be crushed or powdered first?


For some of us at least, it's amazing how, well within a lifetime, what was once common public information, taught in schools etc.,

simply disappears from (or never even enters) the memory banks of so many. Amber has proved to have been associated with some sites of human habitation for around 600,000 years. Given the common geological association between the laying down of amber seams and of coal seams, it's hard to imagine that those human groups that knew of amber did not also know of coal.


I was born in my maternal grandparents' house in 1941. That world was much as my grandparents would always have known it. Central heating in the UK was to be found only in a few public buildings and almost never in homes. Heating in the rooms of a house was either by an open coal fire in the room or, increasingly post about 1945 electric fires in which a metal and ceramic element was heated red-hot by the flow of electricity through it. Day-rooms were heated but bedrooms almost always not - one. We still had but no longer used my grandparents' covered bed warming pans (made of copper and with long wooden handles) into which the dying coals from the day-room fires would be placed and taken to the bedrooms to be put in beds to warm them up - but these had been replaced by ceramic hot water bottles, filled with freshly boiled water that were safer and could be kept in the bed with one during the night.


Finally, the 'range' in the kitchen on/in which food was cooked (in one grandparents home) use a slow-burning fuel (to which we shall return) and heated all the hot water for the household. Alternatively, as in my other grandparents home , the household's hot water was obtained using a small closed furnace dedicated solely to that function. Coal burns well in an open fire, the better ventilated, the hotter the burn. And, as already pointed out elsewhere, in the burning of coal several valuable substances are wasted.


As already pointed out, several valuable gas and oil substances are lost. The trick, developed in the 19th C is to heat coal with no supply of air. in this way the gas and oil products are driven out of the coal and can be collected and refined. The solid material remaining is a 'special' fuel that is well suited to burning in a very low supply of air. The name of this special fuel may have varied from place to place but in GB it was generally called 'coke'.


Coal fires run reasonably hot and need to be 'open fires' for which there is a good air draft. Domestic furnaces are 'closed fires which need to have only a minimal air supply for the combustion of the special fuel used. Coke either will not burn at all or else burns very badly as fuel in an open fire.


My parents bought their first home as a 'new build' in 1947. Coal fire in the living room, electric fire in the dining room and coke boiler in the kitchen. In 1959, they designed a new home to their specification. This had gas-fired, ducted air central heating to all rooms and, for the living room only, a fireplace fitted with an electrical unit made to resemble a flaming coal fire.

30th Aug 2018 01:14 UTCStephen Turner

Of course you can always give lumps of coal to bad kids for Christmas!


I have an ongoing conversation with my 8 yo whenever he starts the 'what am i getting for Christmas' routine. I tell him a lump of coal of course then launch into an explanation of how useful a lump of coal is - for heating and cooking food and if he really applies some heat and pressure maybe some diamonds. But with the last 'promotion' of coal he was actually starting to think it might be pretty cool to have a lump of coal, so i might actually have to find some.


Thanks to all for the additional utilities of coal which i can add to the next conversation.

31st Aug 2018 15:36 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

Stephen Turner Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Of course you can always give lumps of coal to bad

> kids for Christmas!

>


That might backfire if the child is a budding geologist... ;-)

31st Aug 2018 16:30 UTCKevin Hean

My parents always had a fist sized lump of coal in their refrigerator, they said it removed odours, wether it did or not ????

5th Sep 2018 04:25 UTCDonald B Peck Expert

I was born in 1930. It was my brother's and my job to stoke the coal fire in our central hot air furnace. At different times we used both coal and coke . . . I liked coke better, it seemed to give more heat, less gaseous, and didn't seem as heavy. Then there was the other job; taking the coal ash out and spreading it on the driveway. I think is was about 1945 or so that we switched to an oil burner.

15th Sep 2018 15:24 UTCTim Holtz

Hard coal can be carved. I have an anthracite desktop pen secretary!

16th Sep 2018 04:34 UTCDoug Daniels

Ah the coal ash.... likely containing toxic heavy metals..... or so the EPA says. Just keep them away from waterways.

16th Sep 2018 18:38 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Ash from some coal has enough rare elements in it (germanium, for example), that it could one day be used as ore.

17th Sep 2018 03:45 UTCDoug Daniels

The environmentalists will certainly relish that thought.......

18th Sep 2018 15:56 UTCSteve Hardinger 🌟 Expert

Alfredo is probably correct. The volume of ash created by coal-fired power plants is staggering. During our annual trek to the Denver shows this year we drove past the Hunter Power Plant (coal-fired) in northwestern Utah. This is a huge facility. Every few minutes we passed a truck pulling two trailers of ash. Probably passed 100 trailers in an hour. Now for some speculative math: That plant operates 24/7/365...

18th Sep 2018 17:21 UTCDonald B Peck Expert

I live about 250 yards from the Union Pacific railroad line, just west of Chicago. Everyday coal trains, about 130 gondolas each, pass by. I am not certain of the number (I sleep at night!), but there are at least 6 trains, and I would guess maybe 2 more. At 80 tons per car, that is a lot of coal burned every day. But the coal fired generation plants in the area are gradually shutting down. Not sure, but I think four of them closed in the past year, or so.

19th Sep 2018 10:55 UTCalice jordan

some uses of coals are:

1. Expel Pesticides


2. Keep Cut Flowers Fresh


3. Use as Mulch


4. Keep Bathrooms, Fridges and More Fresh


5. Zap Rust off of Cast Iron


6. Save Linens, Books, and the sky is the limit from there


be that as it may, for parlor gas-let go air focal warming to all rooms and, for the family room just, a chimney fitted with an electrical fireplace {https://sortedforyou.com/best-electric-fireplace} made to take after a flaring coal fire.

20th Sep 2018 02:41 UTCDoug Daniels

Alice - do you mean coal, or charcoal? Two totally different beasts. Most of the uses you mention would indicate charcoal.
 
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