Bulk Anthracite Rice Quality?

So I've been seeing a lot of what almost looks like wood in my coal this year. Don't remember seeing it last year. Is this normal? Can you tell the quality of coal just by looking at it?

Not only do you have some wood in it, it is also not very uniform in size. Suggest you go back to where you got it and ask them how come the wood and how come the size varyings so much. Sometimes they have a run with a hole in a screen that they don't know about until a customer points out the possibility.

It might be the best coal any of us have ever burned, you can't tell by looking at it. Some of the pieces look almost big enough to be buck, but that won't hurt anything.
A little bit of wood is pretty common, and as long as there isn't large pieces, it will feed and burn fine.

Enjoy the heat.

I have noticed the same discoloration, I assumed that there may be some iron or other, that can cause rust.
I also have noticed rust on the concrete slab at the bottom of a portion of the pile I thought was from the coal getting damp.
My storage is under a carport.
I will say that I do not have any issues with it burning, it is anthracite rice from Lehigh.
CS

anything with a specific gravity as light or lighter than coal will float in the breaker's separation process.wood that comes out of old underground mining operations and reclaimed coal from culm banks that might have had trees and shrubs growing on them are usually the source.ashes were often dumped with mine and breaker refuse and ,if it is reprocessed,the ashes will float too.you are paying for coal,not this other stuff,but it is not a perfect process.we have to stomach some of this non-coal material,just as we have to stomach some degradation and variation of size in the coal,which occurs every time the coal is handled.culm recovery breakers have much more trouble with the impurity problem.I think that is what you have there.it will probably burn ok,but can usually be bought at a lower price.

anything with a specific gravity as light or lighter than coal will float in the breaker's separation process.wood that comes out of old underground mining operations and reclaimed coal from culm banks that might have had trees and shrubs growing on them are usually the source.ashes were often dumped with mine and breaker refuse and ,if it is reprocessed,the ashes will float too.you are paying for coal,not this other stuff,but it is not a perfect process.we have to stomach some of this non-coal material,just as we have to stomach some degradation and variation of size in the coal,which occurs every time the coal is handled.culm recovery breakers have much more trouble with the impurity problem.I think that is what you have there.it will probably burn ok,but can usually be bought at a lower price.

I have Lehigh rice and it is sized great with no wood or fines. I got it at breaker in September. It is the best coal that I have burned so far.

Hello Shawn,

The mines and coal packing/bagging plants do not have low speed picking belts anymore as they were made illegal years ago by DOI/MESA/MSHA/NIOSH.

Warners simply scoops up the coal dumped in their yard with a skid loader and then dumps it into a grain cart in their building and they bag the coal by putting the mouth of the bag under a chute welded to the grain bins chute where the bag is resting on the platform scale they use to weigh the bags as they are filled.

The rolling platform scale they use is certified for the legal sale of coal by the Tioga County Department Of Weights And Measures and the annual scale certification sticker is placed on the scales upright post where it can be seen easily by the public.

The scales they own are certified by the Tioga County Department of Weights And Measures annually.
The truck scale is certified annual by the Tioga County department of weights and measures and or by the scale repair company used to maintain the platform scale they use to load coal in bulk.

After the bags are filled they tie them shut with a millers knot and stack the filled bags in the shed where they are filled.

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About coal sizing:

This is not much of an explanation, but there are many types and models of primary and secondary crushers used for breaking and sizing mined material.

Many room and pillar coal mines use a feeder breaker to size the coal after its is mined by the continuous miner and loaded into a shuttle car that is battery powered or high voltage electric or diesel powered which transports it to the feeder breaker which sizes and breaks the material in one operation then conveyed to the surface using a belt conveyor or a hoist and ore skip system in many deep mines.

Deep mined coal mines as a rule do not have a secondary screening plant underground as the screening and cleaning systems needed to clean and wash the coal could not be used underground simply as they are designed to be used as huge vertical cleaning and washing plants AND many mine operators use one plant for crushing, washing, sizing, and cleaning the coal from one or mines as they take advantage of height above the ground to use a water cleaning system to strip out the oil and clay and rock using hydro cyclones to wash away the dirt and clay and coal fines using chemicals to clean high sulfur coals.
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About screening:

The top cut of the primary screening system in use is referred to as the coarse screen deck.

Any coal or debris that slides down and cannot pass the largest sieve size which is the screen weave/ slot/passage/length and width is allowed to drop off the screen deck and falls off the screener and then is returned to a secondary crusher where it is broken by a roll crusher, hammer mill or cone crusher depending on the system employed for the mineral that is mined.

Any wood found in the coal can come from old railroad ties used in the mine that were broken and dumped into a GOB pile which is waste rock and coal or from weed trees growing in the surface dumped gob piles.

About garbage/waste in coal-
When old room and pillar mines are stripped open to reclaim the coal it is a long process;
First the the soil is stripped down to the bed rock then the soil is dumped off to the side to be used for site reclamation and reseeding the area back to a near original condition/surface contour.

The rock above the coal seam is then broken with the same machine or bulldozers/or drilled with track drills then blasted and stripped after breaking by a ripper on the dozer or broken by explosives.

The remaining coal pillars used to support the mine workings are then broken and stripped away from the mine floor and then most of the remaining coal in the mine floor is stripped away to the bedrock/shale/mudstone/limestone bed layer. depending on the age of the old mined out workings they are stripping / day lighting they will most often remove old railroad ties and wood used to create cribbing that was used to support the mine roof and maintain the mine roof stability in the mining panel. The mine roof is also referred to as the "back".

The coal is then hauled to a processing plant where it is first screened, broken, screened again then washed to remove any rock that is heavier than the coal and then sized and either stockpiled or bagged for sale in bulk and bags to coal yards or retail chains.

In the early days of pick and shovel and black powder mining of anthracite coal much of the old anthracite coal that was mined did not get much of the coal that was in the rock above the coal seam as the coal was simply shoveled into push cars and then the rock that had coal in it was simply carried away and dumped in the gob piles in the area behind the room and pillar mining operation or simply dumped by wheel barrows in the open mined out areas behind the active mining areas.

The many bituminous coal breakers that had multiple coal car sidings under their storage bins of the breaker building were typically built into the mountain sides and had slow speed picking belts to get rid of the garbage and rock that was in the coal as it was being conveyed out of the mine and screened into the bins of the breaker building that was constructed over the sidings.

The loading system was set up so that each siding was ment for one size of bituminous coal e.g.,

In just one example of bituminous coal sizing from the various coal sizing charts produced over the years

Run of Mine is minus 8 inch
Lump is minus 5 inch
egg is minus 5 inch to 2 inch
nut is minus 2 inch to 1 1/4 inch
stoker is minus 1 1/4 to minus 3/4 inch
slack coal is minus 3/4 inch

Bituminous coal was also sized larger e.g. , cupola, steamboat etc.