Deep Mined or Strip Mined

So it seems that if all I am looking for is 2 ton in western MA, I am stuck with 250ton of strip mined Blaschak.

Time to move to PA.

Thanks for all the feedback.

Mark.

SMITTY wrote: Have had rocks, boulders, twigs, branches in the bags & have found shale & molten metal in the ash. Some of the rocks have jammed the grates open requiring a clean out & re-start. That's always good for the stress level!

That's indicative of coal from a culm bank, especially the "molten metal" That's not molten metal but a clinker/ash generally associated with mine fires that are common to culm banks.

The big giant piece of mud could have come from anywhere but I'd guess it was most likely from the loader.

Burning Blashak for $5.00 a bag this year, it is more evenly sized than the Reading, it had some nut sized mixed in with the rice but not very much, I put it to good use and filled a few Christmas stockings for the sister in law!

I did find a few small peices of wood in the Reading, but nothing big enough to cause a problem in my Stoker

BK

bksaun wrote: I did find a few small peices of wood in the Reading, but nothing big enough to cause a problem in my Stoker

BK

This is not uncommon, one piece of wood makes millions of little pieces..

I agree with Yanche's earlier post because a lot of the coal that is strip mined can be deep mined. It is the same coal but it is taken out by different methods. When you travel along I-81 for example, notice how the rock is layered on hard angles and not flat. The coal veins lay in a similar fashion. In deep mining you work your way below it, blast it loose and take it out from below. Strip mining removes the rock from the top and then the coal. All this is done with a drag line. It would stand to reason that you can get more "pure" coal out by blasting the relatively soft coal from between the rock and letting it run out the bottom than by using a large drag line shovel to strip mine it. If you start with cleaner coal you should end up with cleaner coal.

Much of the poorer quality coal you get will burn and may even burn quite well especially when burned rather hot, but the real trouble with the bad or dirty coal, especially re-claimed culm bank coal is when you try to run a boiler during the summer on just a minimal fire.

heatwithcoal wrote:So it seems that if all I am looking for is 2 ton in western MA, I am stuck with 250ton of strip mined Blaschak.

Time to move to PA.

Thanks for all the feedback.

Mark.

Don’t feel too bad Blaschak coal is about the finest one can get in the area it will always burn, its hot and relatively good ash content for white ash coal . I prefer to make the trip and pay a bit more for it rather than the deep mined red ash available just a mile away which can sometimes be problematic burning in my other stove the Liberty which is a Franco Belge knock off the red ash is fine for the stoker . Blaschak strip mines some of the best veins of coal in the region on the grounds of some of the eras largest most popular collieries .They also extensively and frequently batch test the finished product for quality control because it's sold across the nation . Strip mine coal quality has more to do with the cleaning process than its extraction method and I always try to get coal that has been Heavy Media Cleaned sort of a modern day squad of breaker boys . Do a Google search on it .

Actually, the Blaschak burned well in my stove, but I'm getting to the other coal from Dickson City now. That went in the bin first. I've been digging out of the middle of the pile, saving some of the Blaschak on the sides.

No $$$ for a trailer yet, Looks like I'll be making a run for more bags soon. Once I start removing the front boards from the bin I start to get the urge to buy more coal.

Bummer - My Casey Kassa Coal Company (Silverbrook Anthracite Inc) is surface mined.

I am now obsessed with my want or deep mined coal!

Gary in Pennsylvania wrote:Bummer - My Casey Kassa Coal Company (Silverbrook Anthracite Inc) is surface mined.

I am now obsessed with my want or deep mined coal!

Well Gary come in and get some Pm me And I will take you to get some

Burning Blaschak bagged coal out here in Illinois. Seems to burn very well, nice clean coal. Don't have much of a choice as it's all I can get, but it works well and the price ($6/bag) is reasonable considering where I'm located. I'd love to make a pilgrimage to NEPA and stock up on some deep mined bulk rice coal, but considering diesel is way north of $3/gallon, it's pretty hard to justify. I can only tow maybe 3 tons with the Liberty CRD, and that's pushing it.

Chris

Here's my take on it. In the strip mines we use enormous equipment to remove the overburden (dirt on top of the coal) then we clean the top of the coal with a dozer or loader. The coal is never level like a tabletop, it rolls, and pitches, and has fractures in it for dirt to settle into. After the "top of coal" is cleaned another machine will come in and load it into trucks which then transport it to the plant, crusher, breaker or whatever you call it where you are at. while the coal is being loaded on the truck the trash from the top has to go into the truck and depending on the skill of the equipment operator there will be a little trash from the bottom which rolls and pitches just like the top. If you get your coal from a small family operated mine it will almost certainly be cleaner because they will be using smaller equipment in an environment that isn't so much about quantity as it is about quality. I imagine even the underground production outfits have better quality control than strip mines do because they don't have to deal with the rain, and snow that cause mudballs to end up in the consumers coal.

Sau, anthracite goes through an additional process that I believe is not used in the bit. industry. They have a separation plant between the "breaker" and the sizing plant that separates the rock and mud from the coal. Once its crushed down to size it goes into what is called a menzies cone. This cone has a mixture of water and magnetite, the magnetite changes the specific gravity of the water. Rock is heavier than coal so the rock sinks and the coal floats when the amount of magnetite is just right.

Technically you could process a very low grade product containing an enormous amount of rock and dirt and still get a very desirable product however that is not practical for consumer use because the more rock your processing the more your profits drop. In addition to the lower output of salable material rocks beat the *censored* out of the equipment. They do this to some extent where they process old waste banks that still have a lot of coal in the however this product for the most part ends up at Co-Gen plants because its a very low grade material. Co-Gen plants don't require the high grade material required for consumer stoves and furnaces.

You are certainly correct about the coal we ship from WY. It goes to the plant and is crushed to three inches and loaded on the train. I've never worked in an eastern mine, and I know you guys clean your coal but didn't know the process until now.

Years ago I worked at several coal facilities one place was a bank reclamation plant. I ran a 992 cat loader feeding culm banks into a grizzly that fed the plant. There were times I would dig into hundreds of tons of buired rice coal. It was there becuase many years prior a coal breaker was set up there that discarded rice since it wasent used back then. It burnt really well,ten ash. Another place I worked was Jeddo coal company that is a strip mine operation. I remember one time the marion 8700 was digging mammoth vein one hundred and fifty feet deep forty foot thick and it was like black glass. It had low ash but burnt to fast. Sometimes the right combination of low ash coal and slate gives a better burn. Back then I had a warm morning coal stove that I used to burn that black glass in. I used to bring home chunks the size of a refrigerator and hand crack them for the stove. The coal was so glass like that cracking it with a hammer would inbed shards in your clothes. They used to give us free coal,boy I wish I could get some of that now. I could go on and on about stories from the PA coal mines,but thats another thread.

Randy

I would have to agree with SAU on skill of operators effecting coal quality. We remove overburden with a dragline, then the dozer does an initail clean up of the top of coal. If the dozer is sloppy, the scraper or 834 has a heck of a time doing the next stage of clean up. And if they don't do so well, the blade that does the final clean up has an even harder time. And if the blade doesn't get it down to hard, then the drill has problems which then effects the blasting of the coal. If every step of the process has been accomplished well, the driller can still drill too deep or too shallow so that when the coal is shot, either the innerburden gets shot up into the coal or the bottom of the coal doesn't get shot. And if the coal doesn't get shot, the loading equipment has a hard time digging. Sometimes the loading operator digs into the floor or the wall for a little extra "ash," or doesn't seperate out the parting or a sulphur band. And if the trucks were hauling for reclamation prior to hauling to the retail yard and the operator doesn't clean the bed of the truck, well, there's your mud ball. And of course, de-water the pits at every stage of the process can effect everything, too. And a poor engineering plan or failure to follow a good plan can effect the coal quality as well. Not every operator in this process is skilled and/or consciencious. One operator can effect the quality of thousands of tons of coal.

Also, our pits vary quite a bit in contents of sulfur, sodium, ash and BTUs.

Is the molted metal scoria?