DFC coal reclamation system for the plant of the future for processing clean coal

Conference · Fri Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1993

OSTI ID:45092

Karsnak, G; Hoppe, J

The coal resources of the United States are vast and provide a sound uninterruptable source of energy for both domestic use and international export which will continue to be available for hundreds of years in the future. It has been estimated that the vast U.S. Coal resources can be used as an economic way of producing power for another 300-400 years as predicted by both federal and industrial energy analysis sources. The {open_quotes}proven coal reserves{close_quotes} of the country or demonstrated reserve base (DRB) was estimated to be 467 billion short tons in 1987 based on DOE/EIA estimates of the coal that can be economically removed from the ground by state-of-the-art coal mining technology currently used by industry. These estimates are based on {open_quotes}state level{close_quotes} data that were collected by the DOE/EIA in recent studies attempting to quantify the economically usable coal reserves of the U.S. and provide estimates of the total available reserve base. The estimation of the U.S. coal resource base often leads to a misunderstanding of the actual coal reserves available as a carbon based fuel. Coal resources are defined as the amount of coal in the ground which may be made available for end-use in energy production while the quantifying of coal reserves is based on the amount of recoverable coal which can be economically extracted from the ground through conventional mining methods. What is customarily ignored in these estimates is the coal waste generated during coal beneficiation and which accumulates as a result of coal cleaning plants associated with most coal utilization applications.

• OSTI ID: 45092
• Report Number(s): CONF-930413--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
AGGLOMERATION
CLEANING
COAL
COAL PREPARATION PLANTS
DESIGN
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
MATERIALS RECOVERY
RESERVES