Coalpail.com Forum

i know there is a difference in btus with anthracite vs bituminous,but I stopped at a coal yard on the way home from work to pick up about 500 lbs of bulk coal.anyhow to my question,the fella and I go into a conversation about the different prices throughout the area and he tried to tell me there are higher outputs of btus on some anthracite vs others.is this just a sales pitch

There were a few posts last season about BTU's in coal. From what I remember there is a difference from area to area as well as type to type.

In general anthracite has more BTUs than Bituminous. But there are some Bituminous coals that have the same or higher BTU's than some of the poorer Anthracite coals.

Each 'batch' of coal from a particular vein of coal has it's own characteristics. Each one may have more or less ash, volitiles, and other contaminants compared to another vein of coal.

So it may have been a sales pitch, but it is based in fact. If he was 'selling' you on his coal, he should have shown you the assay on his coal. If the coal is sold to industry an assay of the coal is required.

Forum member Berlin is very knowledgable on this, maybe he will post here and correct me if I'm off base. Maybe he will educate us on this subject.

Hope this helps, Greg L

anthricite is generally from 10,000 btu/lb to 14,000 btu/lb and bituminous is 13,000 btu/lb to 15,800btu/lb

OK ! I stand corrected, I thought Anthracite had more BTUs.

But as you can see from what member Berlin posted there is a wide variation in the BTU content of the coal from mine to mine, and I'm sure a difference between each vein of coal within a mine.

Greg L