Here is your free sample essay on Coal

Coal is a sedimentary, flammable, organic rock made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. It was formed from prehistoric vegetation that accumulated about 300 million years ago when much of the Earth’s surface was swamp, and is the most abundant and least expensive fossil fuel.

As plants and trees in the swampy areas died off, the remains sank, eventually forming a dense material called peat. Layers of sediment and soil accumulated over the peat, and the combination of heat from the Earth’s core and the increasing pressure of rock and sediments caused the eventual formation of carbon-rich coal.

Coal is currently the most widely used fuel source for electricity generation, accounting for nearly 40 percent of worldwide electricity production. Reserves are also widely distributed throughout the globe, although the United States, Russia, China, and India account for more than half of the world’s recoverable coal reserves.

In most parts of the world, coal mining has become a highly regulated and technical operation in an attempt to mitigate the environmental impacts and curb the health risks associated with mining.

Surface mining requires the removal of massive amounts of topsoil, which can cause erosion, loss of habitat, and dust pollution. Mining can also cause heavy metals to dissolve and seep into both ground and surface water, which can disrupt marine habitats and deteriorate sources of drinking water.

Coal mining can also be detrimental to the health of miners. The most notorious health problem is black lung, or coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, a lung disease contracted from prolonged exposure to coal dust.

Other impacts associated with coal use are particulate emissions, ground level ozone (smog), and acid rain. Coal combustion emits fly ash into the atmosphere, which is a source of air pollution.

Upon combustion, coal also produces a number of gaseous byproducts, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and methane, which are greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.

India has limited reserves of capital sources of energy. The reserves of coal have been estimated at 24,074 crore tonnes and 89.21 per cent of these reserves are concentrated primarily in the Chota Nagpur plateau in the states of Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh while Godavari Valley coalfield accounts for 5.70 per cent of the coal reserves.

This indicates the poor distribution of coal from the national point of view, more than 80 per cent of the coal is found in the Damodar Valley. There is hardly any coal in southern, western and northwestern parts of the country, which naturally involves the difficulty and high cost of transportation of coal to these parts.

The per capita available reserves of coal in India are about 140 tonnes against 21700 tonnes in Russia, 8260 tonnes in Australia, 7050 tonnes in U.S.A. and 1780 tonnes in Poland. The states of West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh produced about 64 per cent of the total output of the country in 2002-03 when about 267 million tonnes (44.3 per cent) of coal out of national output of 339 million tonnes were utilised for the generation of thermal power in different parts of the country.

Qualitatively, the Gondwana coals are by far the best and include valuable cooking coals, which are still being wastefully consumed for steam rising. In fact, there is hardly a state in India where thermal power project is not located. Besides, atmospheric pollution, the generation of thermal power creates the problem of disposal of coal ash.

It is also more expensive as hydropower costs only one-third to one-half of the cost of thermal power, and by far is the cheapest source of energy. The other important users of coal are manufacturing industries and railways. There is a scarcity of coal for meeting the needs of various manufacturing industries in the whole country.