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.So after a light diversion into poetry and prose, back to basics.
Last week, I made a comment about a discovery I made at the bottom of my road, by which I learnt that there had been a coal mine there for near on 100 years. Now, Joy of Fishes and I had an exchange of comments about mining history and techniques, but as it was late in the day, I am guessing it did not get many eyeballs, so I thought it might be an idea to explore this more generally.
Now first off, many of you know I was raised in South Wales, which along with Yorkshire was the pre emininent coal mining area of the UK. Because of this in high school, when studying geography, which included geology and economic geography, we learnt all about the different forms of mines, and how they related to the local area.
I am currently living in the Rhein Ruhr area which is and always has been the dominant coal mining area in Germany which is one of those strange co-incidences of life.
Coal has been mined and exploited for more than 3000 years, used primarily as a fuel for heating and a combustible for smelting and iron work. However it was the invention of the rotating steam engine by James Watt in 1781 that really ramped up the demand for coal.
In 1781 James Watt patented a steam engine that produced continuous rotative motion.[1] Watt's ten-horsepower engines enabled a wide range of manufacturing machinery to be powered. The engines could be sited anywhere that water and coal or wood fuel could be obtained. By 1883, engines that could provide 10,000 hp had become feasible.[2] Steam engines could also be applied to vehicles such as traction engines and the railway locomotives. The stationary steam engine was a key component of the Industrial Revolution, allowing factories to locate where water power was unavailable. Source wiki.As the demand for coal increased, the easy availability of supplies diminished, much in the same way that oil is no longer just a question of sticking a hole in Texas, but is focused on fracking and tar shales. And so a major mining industry , beginning in the Uk but spreading rapidly to Germany, France, Poland and the US developed to exploit the coal resources that were deep underground.
During the late 19th Century, a requirement for a more easily transportable fuel was needed, and a process to convert coal into town gas was developed. This allowed for the street lighting in Victorian England, ( and the Gaslight district of San Diego), and is the source of all those nice Christmas cards images of Gaslighters going about their minimum wage jobs. In my youth every town in England had its Gasometer, a very large barrel shaped structure that served to store and pressurize town gas for local distribution. By this time, coal gas was used for cooking and water heating. By the 70's these structures started to disappear as town gas was replaced by natural gas from the North Sea
In another example of serendipity, I worked for several years for El Paso Corp, which was the first company in the US to exploit natural gas for local distribution.
Basically coal comes in a range of qualities - the lowest is Brown coal (sometimes called steam coal) which has a calorific value of around 45%, and this has been used for ship bunkering in the past and electricity generation. It is dirty, inefficient and extremely polluting (think of images of WW1 battleships spewing black smoke). A the other end is anthracite, a very hard mineral, shines like a diamond, with a calorific value over 90%.
Now here is the rub - brown coal is found near the surface, maybe under the plains on Nord Rhein Wesfalia, or just under the summits of Oklahoma mountains. Anthracite, which is formed over much longer periods of temperature and pressure is found several thousand feet below ground. Guess which one is cheaper to exploit .
Next week, after I have taken some more photos, I will go into different mining techniques. But since PCarey seems to have introduced an obligation for some music video, here are the Bee Gees .
And a somewhat less romantic view