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The future of coal


Wanderer Vagabond

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35 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Just like to mention with regard this photo that in the real world like what I live in that many in fact most miners got on well with " coppers " we all lived and socialised in the same pubs 

As my family a couple of generations back included both miners and coppers I can quite believe it.

19 minutes ago, Detling said:

 almost all central heating comes via a gas boiler,

Surely shome mishtake here?

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9 hours ago, Athy said:

As was I when I failed to notice it as anything unusual. But when I come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I saw coke on sale or used. Is it still produced?

 

8 hours ago, springy said:

AIUI Coke is/was one of the products of "the coal gassification" process i.e. the production of town gas, all of the volatilles have been driven off leaving a very light porous solid with a high carbon content and few impurities - as such it does burn clean but usually needs forced air to maintain the burn. It does burn hot and historically most would have been used in iron & steel making as it would not add impurities to the iron, important in the production of cast iron from a Blast Furnace and also when working iron in a forge.

The coming of North Sea Gas and Electric Furnaces means that very little is now produced or used.

 

springy    

The UKs two remaining integrated iron and steel works - at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe - require something in the order of 5 million tonnes of coke to achieve their full annual output. It's purpose is to act as the reducing agent to remove the oxygen from the iron ore, a process which of course creates enormous quantities of carbon dioxide. Naturally a certain amount of the chemicals from the coke end up in the iron hence the need for a 'clean' product but nonetheless the resulting iron has something like 5% carbon content which gives it a brittle nature and results in it being termed pig iron. Making steel is mostly about reducing that carbon content.

I believe that since the closure of the Redcar coke ovens just over a couple of years ago all coke used in UK steel making is imported. Making smokeless fuel is I believe a similar process to making coke.

JP

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8 hours ago, Athy said:

Thanks Springy -now you mention it, I do remember that it was a a by-product of, or connected to, town gas production.

It must have been fed into thousands of school heating boilers in bygone days. I recall that, when I was at primary school in Sheffield, every couple of weeks in winter a lorry used to deliver godknowsowmany tons of it which formed a mountain by one of the building's walls. Of course we children used to love running up and down the mountain, and of course Mr. Lancaster the caretaker would chase us off it - pausing only to pour salt all over the slides which we's made in the school yard. Miserable old git, was Mr. Lancaster, Health & Safety before its time.

I always thought his name was Mr Johnston and that he lived in N W London. He used inhabit a boilerhouse off of the playground the door of which was always open during school hours. As you walked by it the fumes took your breath away. 'ealth & Safety' eat your heart out :D. I also remember him taking the crates of milk in there to warm it up and to put straws into the bottles having first pierced the foil tops the spike on his knife. All done with filthy black hands. We survived:D

 

Frank

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2 hours ago, Detling said:

Coal produces only two of the nasties that are currently in the media, CO2 and Particulates, neither of which are the pollution the government is being taken to court for, that is for the third nasty NOx, this comes from oil and GAS burning. According to a report done for the mayor of London most NOx comes from Central heating(25%) then commercial vehicles (10%) (Buses, lorries and vans) then Aircraft(7%) (Heathrow and City airports) then personal cars both petrol (6%) and diesel (3.5%)(there are more petrol cars than diesel). No one wants to mention these sources, since a huge percentage of our electricity comes from gas fired power stations, almost all central heating comes via a gas boiler, and we want food and goods in the shops as well as our foreign holidays, so what can we cut out? I know lets go after the canal boats which produce less than 0.01% of the problem.

NOx is highly localised around main roads however:

http://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/annualmaps.asp

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1 hour ago, Captain Pegg said:

Making smokeless fuel is I believe a similar process to making coke.

I thought manufactured smokeless fuels were usually a mix of crushed anthracite, pet coke, fillers such as brick dust or power station ash and cement to bind it all together. The readiness to light is a clue as to the proportions of anthracite and pet coke and the colour of the ash as to the filler – it's sometimes quite red.

More pet coke = easier to light, more anthracite = easier to keep in overnight.

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24 minutes ago, BruceinSanity said:

I thought manufactured smokeless fuels were usually a mix of crushed anthracite, pet coke, fillers such as brick dust or power station ash and cement to bind it all together. The readiness to light is a clue as to the proportions of anthracite and pet coke and the colour of the ash as to the filler – it's sometimes quite red.

More pet coke = easier to light, more anthracite = easier to keep in overnight.

I don't know the detail but I have lived in relatively close proximity to a couple of plants that made the stuff, Keresley (Coventry) and Avenue (Chesterfield). I thought the volatiles were removed by a similar process to coking. I don't think the coal that served both those plants - which came from the Nottinghamshire coalfield - was anthracite. Things may have moved on though. That was the 1980s/90s.

JP

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9 hours ago, bizzard said:

Us and neighbours had Parkray stoves fitted for central heating. Our neighbour next door was a stoker at the huge east London Beckton gas works...... Anyway it burned superbly and really hot on our Parkrays, really hot water. The massive slag heap still remains close by the A13 road near East Ham.

Parkray fires (not stoves) became popular as smoke control zones were declared under the Clean Air Act.  Unlike open fires, they could burn coke efficiently and in the mid-60s coke was cheap being a largely unloved by-product of town gas.  They had a back boiler to provide central heating - which was becoming de rigeur around this time in modest houses.

And, as Bizzard will know, the slag heaps were known as Beckton Alps well before there was any thought of the ski slope use.  They were a well-used navigational aid for those of us from south of the river.

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There is still a scheduled rail service taking coal from South Wales , "Onllwyn Washery",presumed open-cast, to Scunthorpe "Coal Plant" . This must be some kind of coking process, still required for steel making. Not vast quantities, but a 2000ton train once or twice a fortnight.It seems it isn't all imported, depending on how you feel about Wales:)

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As I type this I am burning Calco which is a petcoke. (By-product of oil refining.). I love it but it does need treating differently to smokeless coal, or you’ll end up melting your stove!

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5 hours ago, Detling said:

Coal produces only two of the nasties that are currently in the media, CO2 and Particulates, neither of which are the pollution the government is being taken to court for, that is for the third nasty NOx, this comes from oil and GAS burning. According to a report done for the mayor of London most NOx comes from Central heating(25%) then commercial vehicles (10%) (Buses, lorries and vans) then Aircraft(7%) (Heathrow and City airports) then personal cars both petrol (6%) and diesel (3.5%)(there are more petrol cars than diesel). No one wants to mention these sources, since a huge percentage of our electricity comes from gas fired power stations, almost all central heating comes via a gas boiler, and we want food and goods in the shops as well as our foreign holidays, so what can we cut out? I know lets go after the canal boats which produce less than 0.01% of the problem.

I think you need to google that first SO2, Nox, mercury, lead, arsenic the list is long and deadly I am afraid 

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10 hours ago, billh said:

There is still a scheduled rail service taking coal from South Wales , "Onllwyn Washery",presumed open-cast, to Scunthorpe "Coal Plant" . This must be some kind of coking process, still required for steel making. Not vast quantities, but a 2000ton train once or twice a fortnight.It seems it isn't all imported, depending on how you feel about Wales:)

Onllwyn washery is the processing plant and railhead for Celtic Energy's three opencast sites. It blends high quality anthracite from Gwaun-cae-Gurwen with lesser quality from two other sites primarily for the purpose of fuelling the burners at Aberthaw power station which are specifically configured to burn such coal.

Must admit I thought that train went to Immingham for export purposes. Nonetheless, it may be that the Port Talbot and Scunthorpe plants retain coking ovens but Port Talbot certainly had daily trainloads of coke from the north east until at least a couple of years ago and receives direct shipping imports.

A 2,000 tonnes train would have about 1,400 tonnes of net coal product on board which would make about 900 tonnes of coke which in turn would make about 2,000 tonnes of steel. About one days worth of production.

JP

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In '62 we did a large tiling job at East Midlands Gas Board in Sheffield, they produced masses of coke delivered via a conveyor belt onto a 30' High pile. Bitterly cold weather and we were instructed to help ourselves to as much as we wanted to keep warm, one of my jobs was to collect barrow loads of the stuff for our large brazier. Lovely fuel, light to shovel and burned easily and smoke free, 

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19 hours ago, peterboat said:

I think you need to google that first SO2, Nox, mercury, lead, arsenic the list is long and deadly I am afraid 

The ones in the media hype at the moment are NOx particulates and CO2 the journalists either are unaware of all the others or studiously ignoring them, just like central heating is not mentioned.

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On 04/03/2018 at 13:10, Athy said:

Oh, I have seen that photo before - the chap on the right was a miner who ws apparently quite a character and actually got on well with the coppers. I think he passed away fairly recently.

I wouldn't have remembered the name "Orgreave" though, no.

IIRC the bloke on the right worked at Yorkshire Main, Edlington.

The policeman later went to the US.

On 04/03/2018 at 13:11, TheBiscuits said:

That's a strike against Athy then!

I was there!

(And I've never seen so many policemen in one place before or since)

 

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On 04/03/2018 at 13:32, Peter X said:

A friend of mine was a young PC at the time of the miner's strike, often sent up north for it, and joked that he was sad when it ended because he'd made enough on overtime to pay for his house extension.

While others went for a year without wages.

I hope, with the passing of time, he has the decency to feel embarrassed about this.

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On 04/03/2018 at 17:00, mrsmelly said:

< snip >The main difference was the miners got paid considerably more than the police.

Not when we were on strike, we didn't!

Its a long time ago but I seem to remember getting paid £36.06 per shift, plus bonus, in the 1980s, with 25p per hour unsocial hours money for working between 10pm and 8am.

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My plan to install a stove at home and send nasty smoke rolling down the north downs to London Basin specifically to choke and shut up Mayor Khan is foiled.

Apparently I need a Defra approved stove and must only use authorised fuels (in my case seasoned wood). Otherwise Hetas chap won't instrall my stove and self certify for building regs.

Anyway - soon have it chuffing away.

Edited by mark99
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Oi, mark99, when your smoke is rolling downhill on its way to Mayor Khan it'll still be relatively concentrated as it runs down the Wandle valley, in which lies my humble abode. But speaking as someone who crews for the NBT which sells many tons of fuel a year in the Thames Valley including some coal I suppose I mustn't grumble.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 04/03/2018 at 18:11, Captain Pegg said:

 

The UKs two remaining integrated iron and steel works - at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe - require something in the order of 5 million tonnes of coke to achieve their full annual output. It's purpose is to act as the reducing agent to remove the oxygen from the iron ore, a process which of course creates enormous quantities of carbon dioxide. Naturally a certain amount of the chemicals from the coke end up in the iron hence the need for a 'clean' product but nonetheless the resulting iron has something like 5% carbon content which gives it a brittle nature and results in it being termed pig iron. Making steel is mostly about reducing that carbon content.

I believe that since the closure of the Redcar coke ovens just over a couple of years ago all coke used in UK steel making is imported. Making smokeless fuel is I believe a similar process to making coke.

JP

Actually I think you’ll find that they produce coke on site and use the gases produced too. 

Port talbot doesn’t use welsh coal anymore of course.

the raw coke/iron ore/ limestone goes through quite a lot of processing  (sintering) before being chucked in the blast furnace 

 

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1 minute ago, jonathanA said:

Actually I think you’ll find that they produce coke on site and use the gases produced too. 

Port talbot doesn’t use welsh coal anymore of course.

the raw coke/iron ore/ limestone goes through quite a lot of processing  (sintering) before being chucked in the blast furnace 

 

Happy to be corrected; since I posted I have confirmed the above with one of my colleagues who knows his way around Scunthorpe works. The heat produced by coking is used to heat the sheds. He wasn't certain that it is 100% all done on site though. I had thought coke was imported but it must be the coking coal. I also recalled Tata spent a long time looking at the possibly of mining locally to Port Talbot but nothing came of it.

JP

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It’s a long time since I’ve been to Scunthorpe but I was at port talbot quite recently and apparently due to the drop in the value of the pound it’s making profitable steel again...

Tata have sold off Scunthorpe and it’s now part of ‘British Steel’ 

apologies for going off topic ! 

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2 hours ago, jonathanA said:

It’s a long time since I’ve been to Scunthorpe but I was at port talbot quite recently and apparently due to the drop in the value of the pound it’s making profitable steel again...

Tata have sold off Scunthorpe and it’s now part of ‘British Steel’ 

apologies for going off topic ! 

But the pound dropping is all bad isn't it ... oh wait, wrong thread.

/BiscuitExit

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