Spontaneous combustion of subsurface coal is an extremely complicated chemical and physical changing process. In order to quantitatively understand the development of underground coal fires, the heat transfer processes coupled with multi-stage oxidation of coal are investigated by experimental and numerical methods in this paper. With controlled temperature and under lean oxygen conditions, the...

Biodesulfurization of coal has been carried out in batch culture of single strain and mixed culture of sulfur oxidizing bacteria. The pure cultures of Thiobacillus thiooxidans and Thiobacillus ferrooxidans utilized inorganic sulfur content of Malaysian coal. The chemolithotroph bacteria were able to grow on coal and metabolize the coal's sulfur content. The batch cultures of coal with 3-5 perce...

A series of molecular and geochemical studies were performed to study microbial, coal bed methane formation in the eastern Illinois Basin. Results suggest that organic matter is biodegraded to simple molecules, such as H(2) and CO(2), which fuel methanogenesis and the generation of large coal bed methane reserves. Small-subunit rRNA analysis of both the in situ microbial community and highly pu...

UNLABELLED Two acid mine drainage (AMD) sites in the Appalachian bituminous coal basin were selected to enrich for Fe(II)-oxidizing microbes and measure rates of low-pH Fe(II) oxidation in chemostatic bioreactors. Microbial communities were enriched for 74 to 128 days in fed-batch mode, then switched to flowthrough mode (additional 52 to 138 d) to measure rates of Fe(II) oxidation as a function...

Microbial CH4 chemistry and its formation in coal are summarised. The results of recent research on microbial CH4 formation are reviewed from Australia, China, Germany, Japan, and the USA. Two fields of interest are considered in this report. Enhanced microbial CH4 production is under investigation to improve the yield of CBM. A further development is to inject CO2 in coal seams, using microbes...

A study was conducted to investigate the effect of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalyst on mercury (Hg) speciation in bituminous and subbituminous coal combustion flue gases. Three different Illinois Basin bituminous coals (from high to low sulfur [S] and chlorine [Cl]) and one Powder River Basin (PRB) subbituminous coal with very low S and very low Cl were tested in a pilot-scale combu...

Simulations and experiments have been carried out to investigate heat transfer and thermodynamic processes in coal-bearing strata in order to quantitatively understand the development of underground coal fires under the spontaneous combustion condition. With the controlled temperature and under lean oxygen conditions, the thermodynamic parameters for coal oxidation at different stages are exper...

Coal is a combustible material applicable to a variety of oxidation scenarios with conditions ranging from atmospheric temperature to ignition temperature. One of the most frequent and serious causes of coal fires is self-heating or spontaneous combustion. Opening an underground coal seam to mine ventilation air, such as long-wall gob and goaf areas and coal stockpiles, creates a risk of sponta...