The present paper investigates the reliability and sensitivity analysis of a coal handling unit of a thermal power plant using a probabilistic approach. Coal handling unit is the main block of a thermal power plant and it is necessary for a good function of a power plant that its power supply, which is dealt in coal handling unit, must function continuously without any obstacle. The configurati...

The potential of coal mine dust to cause disabling pneumoconiosis has long been recognised, but research now suggests that pneumoconiosis is not the only respiratory hazard of coal mining.Over the last 30 years evidence has accumulated that miners also experience an excess of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and this has led the British Government to classify chronic bronchitis and...

RATIONALE Previous studies have shown associations between dust exposure or lung burden and emphysema in coal miners, although the separate contributions of various predictors have not been clearly demonstrated. OBJECTIVES To quantitatively evaluate the relationship between cumulative exposure to respirable coal mine dust, cigarette smoking, and other factors on emphysema severity. METHODS ...

OBJECTIVES We examined elevated mortality rates in Appalachian coal mining areas for 1979-2005, and estimated the corresponding value of statistical life (VSL) lost relative to the economic benefits of the coal mining industry. METHODS We compared age-adjusted mortality rates and socioeconomic conditions across four county groups: Appalachia with high levels of coal mining, Appalachia with lo...

Using coal to produce transportation fuels could improve the energy security of the United States by replacing some of the demand for imported petroleum. Because of concerns regarding climate change and the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with conventional coal use, policies to encourage pathways that utilize coal for transportation should seek to reduce GHGs compared to petroleu...

To investigate if there is synergistic interaction between bamboo with coal, or between torrefied bamboo with coal during cocombustion, bamboo and torrefied bamboo separately were respectively uniformly mixed with coal and the weight percentage of bamboo or torrefied bamboo in the mixture were 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. The combustion behaviors of blends were characterized using thermogravimentric...

We report laboratory experiments to investigate the role of gas desorption, stress level and loading rate on the mechanical behavior of methane infiltrated coal. Two suites of experiments are carried out. The first suite of experiments is conducted on coal (Lower Kittanning seam, West Virginia) at a confining stress of 2 MPa and methane pore pressures in the fracture of 1 MPa to examine the rol...

Automation in underground mining enhances safety and leads to economic efficiencies. After more than 50 years of research, automation tasks have gradually been growing out of the classic engineering/mechanical environment and require a sophisticated datamining treatment. The success of (mechanical) process automation has left only one remaining place in the coal-excavation process where human l...

The volumetric changes in the coal matrix (Coal Shrinkage), permeability under various gas environment conditions as well as perographical properties were studied in the laboratory. The shrinkage and permeability of coal were examined with respect to changing gas type and confining pressures. The shrinkage tests were carried out in high-pressure bombs while the permeability study was conducted ...

Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of the gasification performance in a one-stage, entrained-bed coal gasifier (Shell Coal Gasification Process (SCGP) gasifier) was performed, for the first time. The parametric study used various O2/coal and steam/coal ratios, and the modeling used a commercial code, ANSYS FLUENT. CFD modeling was conducted by solving the steady-state...