this guy and this channel are one of those treasures you occasionally find on TH-cam. didsimenating this content is what the internet was made for, and it's not being done for profit and monetization, but love of science and education.
I am a professional Mechanical Engineer who works for a multi national who supplies equipment to coal mines in Australia & Indonesia, and, quite often go to mine sites and CHHP's . I enjoyes watching this, and the previous lecture very much. Thank you,
Enjoying these lectures very much. A little surprised that this video has been up for the better part of a year, yet has fewer than 1,000 views. It's so well made, and so timely. Looking around for a high-enthalpy geothermal video from EnergyProf!
I'm not trying to pick on him. During this video he seemed to be tripping up on his own words more than usual. Maybe he consumed a bit of ethanol before this lecture? 😆
I was born and raised in Decatur, Illinois and I was amazed to learn how much of town has disused coal mines under it. A good chunk of Illinois has coal underneath it. So many dead coal miners in Decatur and nearby towns in the past...
In IL I am told mine subsidence coverage is mandatory for homeowners insurance because of forgotten poorly documented mines everywhere, your house could be damaged or destroyed if a forgotten mine below it caves in.
People used to make "water gas" from coal for lighting before the electric light. The site of ours in town was designated a toxic site. It's been cleaned up a bit.
In the UK we used coal gas for a long time after electricity became common, coke or "smokeless fuel" was in constant use and a byproduct of that was coal gas and it was used for cooking or heating. Pretty nasty stuff, a lot of the manufacture and storage sites for it sat derelict for a good 30 years after natural gas took over because cleaning up the sites was a hassle and expensive with a good meter or more of top soil needing removal.
It is often overlooked that coal/coal like deposits have been laid down in every geological era. Whilst coal is very abundant its use has been declining in Europe for about a century. In the UK for example peak production was in 1913. That said post WW II there were still some 980 large Collieries and around 1500 small ones (employing under 30 men) France had some 780 Collieries. However as the 20th Century advanced the industry declined. The Netherlands had ceased mining by the mid 1970's. The last Belgian colliery 'Zolder' closed in 1992. By 2004 the last French colliery 'Houve II' closed. In the UK the last three large deep mines 'Hatfield Main' , 'Kellingley' & 'Thoresby' all went in 2016. The last black/hard coal mines in Germany 'Ibbenburren' and 'Prosper Hanial' went a few years later. Today there are no large deep mines West of Upper Sielesia. Here the industry is in sharp decline. On the Czech sector of the basin on one colliery 'CSM' survives following the closure of 'Darkov' last month. It is planned to close 'CSM' next year. Quite how long the industry can survive in Poland is a mute question. A friend of mine who is a senior engineer in the industry thinks that it will be largely gone by 2030. The Collieries that I have mentioned all work Carboniferous-Permian era deposits and are deep mines up to 1600m in depth. The remaining collieries in Germany are opencast workings producing brown coal deposited in the Tertiary era. This type of deposit is also worked in the Czech Republic and Poland as well as many Balkan countries. However it is quite likely that few if any of these deposits will be operating beyond 2050.
Currently here in Czech republic coal is doing the best in a decade. Sadly there is no plan for Most region so once this bubble burst it will be horrible for already poor Sudetenland. ČEZ ( not so state owned not so private energy company) is considering keeping coal online until 2040. all bets are stuck on Dukovany NPP and Temelín NPP. Even though we now have Škoda JS ( one of last companies able to built Pressure vessels in europe) and Big human capital goverment wants to offer it to Westinghouse, EDF or KHNP so we are going to suffocate on all radioactive stuff from coal for a while.
@@michaelnguyen9348 I Know having visited the opencast workings around Sokolov and Most. The last deep mine Důl Centrum went in 2018. I was told by a friend of mine who was an engineer at Sokolov that it will be over by 2035 at the latest. The problem is companies will need to invest in equipment and 2040 is only 18 years away. So I strongly suspect that closure will come earlier (This happened in France originally Charbonnages de France planned a 2015 date in the early 1990's to cease production That was brought forward to 2012. In the end the last colliery Houve II closed in 2004). Michael you are absolutely correct money and resources need to be invested in North Western Bohemia now already many towns including Most and Litvinov have "Social Issues" . Look what has happened around Ostrava. OKD are almost finished. Only Důl CSM remains in production With Důl Darkov having closed this year. Money needs spending around Ostrava and Karvina. A proper plan for the retreat from coal is urgently required.
@@nicholaskelly6375 exactly. We also have finite coal mining limits set in 1990s but there are voices from Coal lobby calling for their repealment. Its obvious that once geopolitical crisis ends coal price will plumet and lead to uncontroled unsupervised collapse of local economy. This situation is horrible and i cant see avoiding of appalachian scenario. Also our district heating system is dependent on coal cogeneration.Its highly unlikely that they can they retrofit them into SMRs and with gas being ruled out there are no alternatives. With germany commiting energetic and economic suicide our coal will be required to run for much longer then planned. ČEZ is declaring carbon neutrality by 2040 but how will they achieve it is unknown. We Already dammed everything we could, there is public oposition to Wind and solar. Solar ended up being the biggest coruption affair in a decade with us being forced to pay 40 billion $ for 4 percent of energy mix ( on sunny days). Nuclear is being attacked by austrians and germans bcs of "safety concerns" we have neither oil nor substantial amount of gas. What is being left is our "amazing" Brown coal, but im sure that polish will gladly sell us some of theirs. It would have been so much easier if Temelin deal wasnt killed in 2014.
@@nicholaskelly6375 My flat in Prague is heated solely by Mělník power plant. How will they replace that source for half of the city? there is no logical solution but to retrofit Mělník into NPP. If Goverment really wanted it they own Škoda JS after regaining it from russians. With some paperwork VVER 440 could heat prague by 2035. No gas, no coal just some uranium.
@@michaelnguyen9348 I have visited Mělnik Power Station and I agree that there are very hard choices ahead. Mĕlnik is actually situated above a significant black/hard coal basin which has never been exploited. In fact there are a series of hard coal basins between Plzen and Mělnik most of which have been worked in the past. The most significant being the Kladno basin where mining ceased in 2002 following the closure of Důl Scholler and Důl Tuchovice. All that remains now is the mining museum at Důl Mayrau which was closed for production in 1997. It is probably the best coal mining museum in the Czech Republic. There is also a deep mine museum near Most. This is Důl Julius III.
Your videos are very educational. We all want energy and now we demand clean energy. Personally I'm a fan of solar and wind supplemented with nuclear. But since we have so much coal, it would be nice if we could use it responsibly. Thanks for the education.
Yes it would, it'sreally clean and efficient way to use coal but outside of cost to build a CGCC those kinds of systems require a lot of energy the one I worked at produced about 900MW with 300MW of that going to run the gasification system
It was actually a popular method in Germany during WWII as a replacement for gasoline. Wood would be gasified and used to fuel an internal combustion engine.
The coal map is a little misleading as it only covers coal producing areas. The UK is not on that map as we are no longer producing coal and our us of it is falling. There, are however, reserves estimated to be about 300 years worth of usable coal underbthe UK, just waiting to be exploited once clean coal technology exists in economically viable forms.
I think "clean" coal would need large power-plants, high energy-prices or co-generation with nuclear-MSR-high-temp reactors, supplying the necessary extra heat for coal-gasification and cleaning. Large modern plants would allow for economical sequestration of Hg (mercury), too. Surprisingly the raw-material for those MSR- ( Oak-Ridge-National-Labs, Alvin Weingerg's reactor experiment in the 1960s; Kirk Soerensen 2010, Ed Pheil 2018) -reactors could come from the ashes (containing U, Th) of coal-power-plants! Development of such technology required international, dedicated cooperation, like the Concorde, for example!
This comment needs to be upvoted more. Although it's not unfair to expect people to at least guess UK should be on the map in terms of coal reserve. You surely hope the industrial revolution is taught at school.
We in Australia are committing economic suicide by not utilising our large coal reserves. After WWI John Monash a great general for us set up a region known as the latrobe valley based entirely on the energy production from coal. It allowed Melbourne to become a modern first class city, now the government down here doesn't invest anything in the Latrobe valley which was a source of so much of it's opulance and we pay extreme prices for electricity down here and run the risk of blackouts during severe heatwaves in summer.
What are you talking about? 73% of our energy comes from coal and we are the biggest coal exporter in the world. We are absolutely utilising our coal reserves. There's some backup station mismanagement, but that's not related to coal under-usage.
Any idea of the type of coal fired plants the Chinese are building today? I have read they are bringing online more than 1 coal fired plant a month. One can only hope they are using many of the pollution controls described in this video. Thanks for another great video Professor!
Your explanation of how an IGCC works is very clear and thorough. It is true that the efficiency of an IGCC power plant is somewhere between those of a pulverized coal plant and a combined cycle (both equipped with carbon capture). However, your numbers are way too low. The efficiency of a state-of-the-art combined cycle is about 63%, and still above 60% in real-life conditions. And, if my memory serves me well, the carbon capture costs about 7 % points in efficiency. The efficiency of state-of-the-art supercritical pulverized coal plants equipped with carbon capture is around 40%, maybe more.
1:10 whether coal forms or doesn't form in tropical areas (arguably most coal dates from times with a much warmer climate than right now) is immaterial, as the continents have had time to move around since then. Even relatively "young" lignite (almost all of it produced after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct) was produced in dramatically different climatic conditions from where it is found today - or is "subtropic swamp" what you think of when you hear "Lusatia"?
Nice lecture. Actually, nowadays ultra super critical powder coal power plants can go up to 42%. Mainly because of higher primary steam temperature. Also, natural gas combined cycle plants now can make 60 % LHV (!) on AC 22 kV. Quite the achievement. .
Gasification of coal, something known from the 18th century, finally placed into commercial town gas production in the 19th century and has advanced the entire time. Town gas is also an old name for syngas, aka gasified coal and the products are largely carbon monoxide, methane, hydrogen, some nitrogen and sulfur dioxide. All useful industrial gases for feedstocks for industry. Note that I'm not suggesting energy generation, as coal is certainly more expensive than both nuclear and natural gas currently. What's left tends to be a coke or tar product, depending upon feedstock and process used, both of use as well. But, one often forgotten usage for coal, filtration. A much disused use is for filtration of municipal water supplies. It takes the place of activated charcoal, doing the same job for less pollution in producing it and the coal can be reused in the end for industrial feedstock.
This video should get an award. "Single best video on TH-cam". The fact is that Coal or Nuclear represent the future of energy. If we burn Coal, then this is the way we should do it.
Japan does have indigenous coal reserves they just don’t mine it anymore, also the coal reserve map is inaccurate as the uk has coal reserves and this isn’t indicated. Other than that I love the videos especially the lectures on nuclear power!
It also seems off to me that the main factor for the global distribution of coal lies in the distance to the sea....since Africa has barely any coal despite its vast size. Still I`m unsure about the situation hundred-million of years ago. I thought the continents just drifted, but maybe Africa was under the sea at that time. Still very informative and pleasantly presented video.
@@Callyrace93 The largest coal deposits are from the Carboniferous to Permian eras meaning between 359 to 251 million years ago. The deposition of the original organic material that has formed the coal is associated with high latitude (both northern and southern hemispheres) environments at a time in Earth's history when it was cold enough that dead organic material could accumulate (ie. not decay and be recycled into the biome). (The textbook example of such an environment now is much of northern Canada.) At this time, only the southern part of Africa is thought to have extended into these crucial latitudes which is probably why you see coal reserves in South Africa but not much elsewhere in the continent. In comparison, Australia is thought to have roughly two thirds of it's landmass in those latitudes. It would have even more coal than is does now except that a lot has probably been eroded away in the past 250 million years.
Guessing because excess water already driven out (most air dried wood outside is around 15% water). Also, charcoal already has other impurities also driven out.
@@Jemalacane0 Charcoal burns hotter than any species of wood, in fact, usually twice as hot. The color of a flame is not an indicator of the temperature, but of what it is burning. Black locust burns around 700 degrees, propane at 2000, and acetylene at 3300 degrees, they all have blue flames. Hydrogen can reach 2,800 degrees, and it burns clear.
It's not actually the WOOD that burns. As you heat wood, it undergoes pyrolysis which (essentially) converts it to flammable gasses. The gas burns, makes heat, continues pyrolysis, sustaining a chain reaction. Charcoal burns directly. It's the surface of the charcoal that is directly undergoing combustion, so it doesn't lose any energy or *time* to convert non-flammable matter to flammable gas through pyrolysis. The process of making charcoal from wood is basically concentrating all the combustibles of wood while removing the non-combustibles. Think of it like wet wood vs dry wood. The dry wood will burn easier, therefore will burn hotter.
@@thundercactus Color temperature is indeed an indicator of how hot it burns. And blue flames are hotter than orange/red ones. www.elgas.com.au/blog/1585-why-does-a-gas-flame-burn-blue-lpg-gas-natural-propane-methane What's more is that blue light is higher energy than some other wavelengths.
I think that fossil fuel (and for that matter any ore) "production" is properly called extraction, not production. You're not producing coal from some other resource. It's already coal and you're extracting it out of the ground. Calling it extraction also draws attention to the fact that coal, oil, etc are finite resources. This isn't so much an environmentalist point as a precision of language point.
"Production is the process of combining various material inputs and immaterial inputs (plans, know-how) in order to make something for consumption (output). It is the act of creating an output, a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals" From wikipedia on Production(economics). When you extract coal you need to seperate qualities remove certain impurities before you have a usable product. So calling it production is wrong at all.
I live in a U.S. city with an electrical grid powered by coal. The pollution, especially during winter is horrible, and my city frequently ranks among the poorest air quality in the United States. I know the professor explains the idyllic situations of these energy-producing power plants, but the air quality I live in is a blatant contradiction of clean coal. I wish he would explain the reasons why the physical outcome does not match the "theoretical" outcome? I hope this doesn't come across as condescending critic, for I legitimately would like to know what causes this discrepancy and what could be done about it. Thank you!
Interesting that in this video about the use of coal, there is not a single word about global warming, and what the world would look like if we burn all of known coal reserves. Here is a very reasonable assessment, and it is devastating : th-cam.com/video/fxJc2csvpLY/w-d-xo.html In summary it is actually very simple : We either, at some point, stop burning fossil fuels, or we will cook this planet. Whatever comes first.
Yeah, his usual sign-off of “that’s what you need to know about [coal]” is very misleading when CO2 barely got a mention at all. Yes, reducing these particulates being released is a good thing, but not compared to drastic actions to move away from fossil fuels, which is essential as you point out.
Coal is the name of the game. The western nations dont want to give loans for nuclear reactors and keep uranium monopolized. The way is to increase the manufacture of coal plants. There is no other way.
@M Detlef Thanks. You did forget a comma after my name though, however, not before DUMBFUCK, which is interesting. Unless you were referring to me as "Crysicle It’s a TITLE, DUMBFUCK!!!" which would be certainly amusing.
A drive through Sparwood and Elkford, BC (I was a surveyor there) would change his mind when he saw their BIIIGGG strip mine. Add to that the sight of the giant coal shipping terminal at Roberts Bank, BC, (right beside the Tsawwassen ferry terminal) where they export US coal for metallurgy.
We will always have coal?...lol Think we need to keep to use to make steel for centuries t come and save power production for more local/renewable job. We had a coal gasification plant next to the Coolwater power plants In Daggett California long ago in the 80s
You didn't mention, that there is more energy in the ashes than in the coal. it comes in the form of Thucolite, Uranium, and Thorium, contained in the ashes of (most) coals. if this powerful raw material would be used in a high-temp MSR (molten salt reactor) the steam for Your coal-gasification could come from the nuclear part of this (huge >1700MW_electric, highly efficient >40% ) operation! Thus, a substantial reduction in CO2/MJ_el can and should be obtained. it purely depends on the skills of engineers, politicians, banksters, and gangsters combined.
US coal is around 2PPM Uranium, that's 2g per ton of coal. 1000MW coal plant burns around 9000t of coal per day. 18kg of Uranium per day, about 6.5t per year. Typical 1000MW thermal neutron reactor needs about 100t of Uranium to work, that's just over 15 years of capture. But refueling is about 20-25t, maybe 4 years, which would coincide with refueling schedule. So two 2000MW coal plants could feasibly create enough uranium to fuel a single reactor. But it's a matter of economic efficiency; we COULD do it, but is it really worth it? As far as using the uranium IN CYCLE, it simply doesn't work that way. You can't just react a few grams of uranium and extract enough thermal energy to make heat on the fly. You need BULK to generate enough heat, tonnes of uranium, and not just any uranium but enriched uranium. You need the right ratio of fissile uranium.. And thorium is useless until its converted to Th233, so you need a neutron source breed it into fuel. In China, they have ash piles of 160-180PPM Uranium. A Canadian company, Sparton, has actually filtered Uranium from their ash and expects to be able to extract 1kg of uranium for about $77. That's $14/kg more than mining it, but can be worthwhile in light of logistical costs of importing uranium.
@@thundercactus thank You for the quantitative information. if Nixon's Wahington had been more far-sighted and technically skilled, they wouldn't have set their bets on the wrong reactor-type, alas, the liquid-Na breeder (which tends to have fire-accidents), the Oak-Ridge MSRE would have been scaled up, and nowadays U-238 would be a fuel, not a radioactive waste! (see Ed Pheil's fast-neutrons MSR-reactor on GordonMcDowell's TH-cam channel) Nuclear energy can be more, than society needs (electrical, chemical. gas, even acetylene for Dupont or BASF, etc. could be possible), only Neutrino-emissions could and probably would be the limit (and asteroids, falling out of the sky, potentially onto a reactor! The modern CO2-discussion ( is it discussion really? or is it an agenda ) is similarly narrow-minded and technological-unskilled, as back then. I think "Coal" and "Nuclear" shouldn't be such rivals.
Interesting to see that during the Industrial Revolution, coal was the placement of industry, and nowadays it can just be shipped around the globe to where labour is cheapest. No wonder we are heading for doom.
This hardly-disguisable, quasi-propaganda piece has been brought to you as a courtesy of the dirtiest and entrenched fossil-fuel vested interests from around the world. Sweet, beautiful and spotless coal, anyone?
@@CastleBomb44 Would you rather cut trees down and burn them for energy? The burning of coal raises Co2 and helps trees and plants grow faster. In fact, the earth is greener as Co2 levels increased according to NASA. www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
this guy and this channel are one of those treasures you occasionally find on TH-cam. didsimenating this content is what the internet was made for, and it's not being done for profit and monetization, but love of science and education.
I am a professional Mechanical Engineer who works for a multi national who supplies equipment to coal mines in Australia & Indonesia, and, quite often go to mine sites and CHHP's . I enjoyes watching this, and the previous lecture very much.
Thank you,
Thank you so much for posting all this everything
Love this guy. Three sheets to the wind and talking cogently about energy sources and much more. Love it.
Enjoying these lectures very much. A little surprised that this video has been up for the better part of a year, yet has fewer than 1,000 views. It's so well made, and so timely. Looking around for a high-enthalpy geothermal video from EnergyProf!
NZ is barely visible on the world coal map but. BUT. coal is our most abundant natural resource by far. green renewable solar energy.
it's probably not a glamorous topic like nuclear physics is. but then again one has to be a little smart to even see the glamour of nuclear physics
I'm soo glad i found your channel.
Great videos on energy. Amazing to find an educator who's not anti-fossil fuel.
Yes providing ideas on energy production without constantly beating the climate change drum is kind of refreshing.
The elegant burp at 11:50 is very exquisite in this lecture on coal, was that CO2 coming out from earlier Coke consumption?
I'm not trying to pick on him. During this video he seemed to be tripping up on his own words more than usual. Maybe he consumed a bit of ethanol before this lecture? 😆
Trying to figure out why this channel doesn't have more subs.....
Been watching videos from it for a while now and it's actually really good.
Yes should be orders of magnitude higher. This guy is great.
I am mesmerized by those ties!
Informative.
This guy could be explaining how and when our sun will go supernova and it would sound like a bedtime story
Except that the sun will never go supernova or even nova. Nowhere near the mass needed.
I was born and raised in Decatur, Illinois and I was amazed to learn how much of town has disused coal mines under it. A good chunk of Illinois has coal underneath it.
So many dead coal miners in Decatur and nearby towns in the past...
Take a look at the maps on the right, particularly the retirements. More coal retirements.
www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/
In IL I am told mine subsidence coverage is mandatory for homeowners insurance because of forgotten poorly documented mines everywhere, your house could be damaged or destroyed if a forgotten mine below it caves in.
Thanks for the free education.
Great Series!
You are a realist. Thank you
People used to make "water gas" from coal for lighting before the electric light. The site of ours in town was designated a toxic site. It's been cleaned up a bit.
In the UK we used coal gas for a long time after electricity became common, coke or "smokeless fuel" was in constant use and a byproduct of that was coal gas and it was used for cooking or heating. Pretty nasty stuff, a lot of the manufacture and storage sites for it sat derelict for a good 30 years after natural gas took over because cleaning up the sites was a hassle and expensive with a good meter or more of top soil needing removal.
It is often overlooked that coal/coal like deposits have been laid down in every geological era. Whilst coal is very abundant its use has been declining in Europe for about a century. In the UK for example peak production was in 1913. That said post WW II there were still some 980 large Collieries and around 1500 small ones (employing under 30 men) France had some 780 Collieries. However as the 20th Century advanced the industry declined. The Netherlands had ceased mining by the mid 1970's.
The last Belgian colliery 'Zolder' closed in 1992.
By 2004 the last French colliery 'Houve II' closed. In the UK the last three large deep mines 'Hatfield Main' , 'Kellingley' & 'Thoresby' all went in 2016. The last black/hard coal mines in Germany 'Ibbenburren' and 'Prosper Hanial' went a few years later. Today there are no large deep mines West of Upper Sielesia.
Here the industry is in sharp decline.
On the Czech sector of the basin on one colliery 'CSM' survives following the closure of 'Darkov' last month.
It is planned to close 'CSM' next year.
Quite how long the industry can survive in Poland is a mute question.
A friend of mine who is a senior engineer in the industry thinks that it will be largely gone by 2030.
The Collieries that I have mentioned all work Carboniferous-Permian era deposits and are deep mines up to 1600m in depth. The remaining collieries in Germany are opencast workings producing brown coal deposited in the Tertiary era.
This type of deposit is also worked in the Czech Republic and Poland as well as many Balkan countries.
However it is quite likely that few if any of these deposits will be operating beyond 2050.
Currently here in Czech republic coal is doing the best in a decade. Sadly there is no plan for Most region so once this bubble burst it will be horrible for already poor Sudetenland. ČEZ ( not so state owned not so private energy company) is considering keeping coal online until 2040. all bets are stuck on Dukovany NPP and Temelín NPP. Even though we now have Škoda JS ( one of last companies able to built Pressure vessels in europe) and Big human capital goverment wants to offer it to Westinghouse, EDF or KHNP so we are going to suffocate on all radioactive stuff from coal for a while.
@@michaelnguyen9348 I Know having visited the opencast workings around Sokolov and Most.
The last deep mine Důl Centrum went in 2018.
I was told by a friend of mine who was an engineer at Sokolov that it will be over by 2035 at the latest.
The problem is companies will need to invest in equipment and 2040 is only 18 years away. So I strongly suspect that closure will come earlier (This happened in France originally Charbonnages de France planned a 2015 date in the early 1990's to cease production That was brought forward to 2012.
In the end the last colliery Houve II closed in 2004).
Michael you are absolutely correct money and resources need to be invested in North Western Bohemia now already many towns including Most and Litvinov have "Social Issues" .
Look what has happened around Ostrava. OKD are almost finished.
Only Důl CSM remains in production
With Důl Darkov having closed this year.
Money needs spending around Ostrava and Karvina.
A proper plan for the retreat from coal is urgently required.
@@nicholaskelly6375 exactly. We also have finite coal mining limits set in 1990s but there are voices from Coal lobby calling for their repealment. Its obvious that once geopolitical crisis ends coal price will plumet and lead to uncontroled unsupervised collapse of local economy. This situation is horrible and i cant see avoiding of appalachian scenario. Also our district heating system is dependent on coal cogeneration.Its highly unlikely that they can they retrofit them into SMRs and with gas being ruled out there are no alternatives. With germany commiting energetic and economic suicide our coal will be required to run for much longer then planned. ČEZ is declaring carbon neutrality by 2040 but how will they achieve it is unknown. We Already dammed everything we could, there is public oposition to Wind and solar. Solar ended up being the biggest coruption affair in a decade with us being forced to pay 40 billion $ for 4 percent of energy mix ( on sunny days). Nuclear is being attacked by austrians and germans bcs of "safety concerns" we have neither oil nor substantial amount of gas. What is being left is our "amazing" Brown coal, but im sure that polish will gladly sell us some of theirs. It would have been so much easier if Temelin deal wasnt killed in 2014.
@@nicholaskelly6375 My flat in Prague is heated solely by Mělník power plant. How will they replace that source for half of the city? there is no logical solution but to retrofit Mělník into NPP. If Goverment really wanted it they own Škoda JS after regaining it from russians. With some paperwork VVER 440 could heat prague by 2035. No gas, no coal just some uranium.
@@michaelnguyen9348 I have visited Mělnik Power Station and I agree that there are very hard choices ahead.
Mĕlnik is actually situated above a significant black/hard coal basin which has never been exploited.
In fact there are a series of hard coal basins between Plzen and Mělnik most of which have been worked in the past.
The most significant being the Kladno basin where mining ceased in 2002 following the closure of Důl Scholler and Důl Tuchovice.
All that remains now is the mining museum at Důl Mayrau which was closed for production in 1997.
It is probably the best coal mining museum in the Czech Republic.
There is also a deep mine museum near Most. This is Důl Julius III.
This is fascinating.
Your videos are very educational. We all want energy and now we demand clean energy. Personally I'm a fan of solar and wind supplemented with nuclear. But since we have so much coal, it would be nice if we could use it responsibly. Thanks for the education.
That gasification system would work well with biomass, right? And some syngas could be siphoned off to make bio diesel or bio jet fuel?
Yes it would, it'sreally clean and efficient way to use coal but outside of cost to build a CGCC those kinds of systems require a lot of energy the one I worked at produced about 900MW with 300MW of that going to run the gasification system
It was actually a popular method in Germany during WWII as a replacement for gasoline. Wood would be gasified and used to fuel an internal combustion engine.
I remember seeing some old picture of a taxi with a "wood stove" for producing gas for the engine. You make due with what you have.
The coal map is a little misleading as it only covers coal producing areas. The UK is not on that map as we are no longer producing coal and our us of it is falling. There, are however, reserves estimated to be about 300 years worth of usable coal underbthe UK, just waiting to be exploited once clean coal technology exists in economically viable forms.
I think "clean" coal would need large power-plants, high energy-prices or co-generation with nuclear-MSR-high-temp reactors, supplying the necessary extra heat for coal-gasification and cleaning. Large modern plants would allow for economical sequestration of Hg (mercury), too. Surprisingly the raw-material for those MSR-
( Oak-Ridge-National-Labs, Alvin Weingerg's reactor experiment in the 1960s; Kirk Soerensen 2010, Ed Pheil 2018) -reactors could come from the ashes (containing U, Th) of coal-power-plants! Development of such technology required international, dedicated cooperation, like the Concorde, for example!
This comment needs to be upvoted more. Although it's not unfair to expect people to at least guess UK should be on the map in terms of coal reserve. You surely hope the industrial revolution is taught at school.
What about the exhaust carbon dioxide though?
Plant food.
Pump it into a greenhouse.
We in Australia are committing economic suicide by not utilising our large coal reserves. After WWI John Monash a great general for us set up a region known as the latrobe valley based entirely on the energy production from coal. It allowed Melbourne to become a modern first class city, now the government down here doesn't invest anything in the Latrobe valley which was a source of so much of it's opulance and we pay extreme prices for electricity down here and run the risk of blackouts during severe heatwaves in summer.
What are you talking about? 73% of our energy comes from coal and we are the biggest coal exporter in the world. We are absolutely utilising our coal reserves. There's some backup station mismanagement, but that's not related to coal under-usage.
Jake Surname it’s concerning how close each evolved ape is to the truth but still won’t take that final step to convert belief into fact
There are other problems with coal such as its high environmental and human cost.
You should burn more coal and bushes. I think it's yet too small smoke to smoke out humanity out of Sydney. Burn more!
I adore your videos. Please feed us more!
Any idea of the type of coal fired plants the Chinese are building today? I have read they are bringing online more than 1 coal fired plant a month. One can only hope they are using many of the pollution controls described in this video. Thanks for another great video Professor!
Your explanation of how an IGCC works is very clear and thorough. It is true that the efficiency of an IGCC power plant is somewhere between those of a pulverized coal plant and a combined cycle (both equipped with carbon capture). However, your numbers are way too low. The efficiency of a state-of-the-art combined cycle is about 63%, and still above 60% in real-life conditions. And, if my memory serves me well, the carbon capture costs about 7 % points in efficiency. The efficiency of state-of-the-art supercritical pulverized coal plants equipped with carbon capture is around 40%, maybe more.
Can you do a video on Asynchronus Generators?
1:10 whether coal forms or doesn't form in tropical areas (arguably most coal dates from times with a much warmer climate than right now) is immaterial, as the continents have had time to move around since then. Even relatively "young" lignite (almost all of it produced after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct) was produced in dramatically different climatic conditions from where it is found today - or is "subtropic swamp" what you think of when you hear "Lusatia"?
Nice lecture. Actually, nowadays ultra super critical powder coal power plants can go up to 42%. Mainly because of higher primary steam temperature. Also, natural gas combined cycle plants now can make 60 % LHV (!) on AC 22 kV. Quite the achievement. .
I like these videos. Thumb up for me.
BUT it's realy disturbing to place Serbia in place of Czech Republic.
Do you even know where Serbia is?
Coal is a great product that has many uses, with many more uses waiting to be discovered.
Gasification of coal, something known from the 18th century, finally placed into commercial town gas production in the 19th century and has advanced the entire time. Town gas is also an old name for syngas, aka gasified coal and the products are largely carbon monoxide, methane, hydrogen, some nitrogen and sulfur dioxide. All useful industrial gases for feedstocks for industry. Note that I'm not suggesting energy generation, as coal is certainly more expensive than both nuclear and natural gas currently. What's left tends to be a coke or tar product, depending upon feedstock and process used, both of use as well.
But, one often forgotten usage for coal, filtration. A much disused use is for filtration of municipal water supplies. It takes the place of activated charcoal, doing the same job for less pollution in producing it and the coal can be reused in the end for industrial feedstock.
This video should get an award. "Single best video on TH-cam". The fact is that Coal or Nuclear represent the future of energy. If we burn Coal, then this is the way we should do it.
Japan does have indigenous coal reserves they just don’t mine it anymore, also the coal reserve map is inaccurate as the uk has coal reserves and this isn’t indicated. Other than that I love the videos especially the lectures on nuclear power!
It also seems off to me that the main factor for the global distribution of coal lies in the distance to the sea....since Africa has barely any coal despite its vast size. Still I`m unsure about the situation hundred-million of years ago. I thought the continents just drifted, but maybe Africa was under the sea at that time. Still very informative and pleasantly presented video.
@@Callyrace93 The largest coal deposits are from the Carboniferous to Permian eras meaning between 359 to 251 million years ago. The deposition of the original organic material that has formed the coal is associated with high latitude (both northern and southern hemispheres) environments at a time in Earth's history when it was cold enough that dead organic material could accumulate (ie. not decay and be recycled into the biome). (The textbook example of such an environment now is much of northern Canada.)
At this time, only the southern part of Africa is thought to have extended into these crucial latitudes which is probably why you see coal reserves in South Africa but not much elsewhere in the continent. In comparison, Australia is thought to have roughly two thirds of it's landmass in those latitudes. It would have even more coal than is does now except that a lot has probably been eroded away in the past 250 million years.
Why does charcoal burn hotter than wood?
Guessing because excess water already driven out (most air dried wood outside is around 15% water). Also, charcoal already has other impurities also driven out.
It doesn't burn hotter than all species of wood. Black locust wood burns with a blue flame which is hot.
@@Jemalacane0 Charcoal burns hotter than any species of wood, in fact, usually twice as hot. The color of a flame is not an indicator of the temperature, but of what it is burning. Black locust burns around 700 degrees, propane at 2000, and acetylene at 3300 degrees, they all have blue flames. Hydrogen can reach 2,800 degrees, and it burns clear.
It's not actually the WOOD that burns. As you heat wood, it undergoes pyrolysis which (essentially) converts it to flammable gasses. The gas burns, makes heat, continues pyrolysis, sustaining a chain reaction.
Charcoal burns directly. It's the surface of the charcoal that is directly undergoing combustion, so it doesn't lose any energy or *time* to convert non-flammable matter to flammable gas through pyrolysis.
The process of making charcoal from wood is basically concentrating all the combustibles of wood while removing the non-combustibles.
Think of it like wet wood vs dry wood. The dry wood will burn easier, therefore will burn hotter.
@@thundercactus Color temperature is indeed an indicator of how hot it burns. And blue flames are hotter than orange/red ones. www.elgas.com.au/blog/1585-why-does-a-gas-flame-burn-blue-lpg-gas-natural-propane-methane What's more is that blue light is higher energy than some other wavelengths.
How is Carbon Dioxide removed or otherwise stopped from entering the atmosphere?
It's not.
You didn't differentiate between bituminous and
Anthracite.
What about "almost coal" (peat). lost of countries like Ireland use it.
I think that fossil fuel (and for that matter any ore) "production" is properly called extraction, not production. You're not producing coal from some other resource. It's already coal and you're extracting it out of the ground. Calling it extraction also draws attention to the fact that coal, oil, etc are finite resources. This isn't so much an environmentalist point as a precision of language point.
"Production is the process of combining various material inputs and immaterial inputs (plans, know-how) in order to make something for consumption (output). It is the act of creating an output, a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals" From wikipedia on Production(economics). When you extract coal you need to seperate qualities remove certain impurities before you have a usable product. So calling it production is wrong at all.
The saddest part of this video - “We have sooo much coal…”
307 Powering the world!!
I hope that all factory’s which burns coal got that filter system for co2. Because oceans got co2
We are dwarves and we are diggy diggy coal.
I live in a U.S. city with an electrical grid powered by coal. The pollution, especially during winter is horrible, and my city frequently ranks among the poorest air quality in the United States. I know the professor explains the idyllic situations of these energy-producing power plants, but the air quality I live in is a blatant contradiction of clean coal. I wish he would explain the reasons why the physical outcome does not match the "theoretical" outcome? I hope this doesn't come across as condescending critic, for I legitimately would like to know what causes this discrepancy and what could be done about it. Thank you!
What city is that? Cause this doesn’t sound at all plausible.
Sounds like Gary Indiana
On the map, it is actually hungary, that is filled blue, serbia is completely left yellow. So who really has more?
I think a single person can bring up, about 16 tons of #9 coal per day.
A molten salt reactor should produce electricity cheaper than coal.
Interesting that in this video about the use of coal, there is not a single word about global warming, and what the world would look like if we burn all of known coal reserves.
Here is a very reasonable assessment, and it is devastating :
th-cam.com/video/fxJc2csvpLY/w-d-xo.html
In summary it is actually very simple :
We either, at some point, stop burning fossil fuels,
or we will cook this planet.
Whatever comes first.
Yeah, his usual sign-off of “that’s what you need to know about [coal]” is very misleading when CO2 barely got a mention at all. Yes, reducing these particulates being released is a good thing, but not compared to drastic actions to move away from fossil fuels, which is essential as you point out.
@Charlie K - sound like it would be easy to confuse someone like you.
The coal deal cut between India and Russia will help India achieve more economic growth.
Coal is the name of the game. The western nations dont want to give loans for nuclear reactors and keep uranium monopolized. The way is to increase the manufacture of coal plants. There is no other way.
forgot Mongolia with Tavan Tolgoy
All this coal burning has raised sea levels so much that the UK has disappeared.
Oxford comma is missing from the tittle.
Good catch, but it is logical that those who want it also use it.
@M Detlef Thanks. You did forget a comma after my name though, however, not before DUMBFUCK, which is interesting. Unless you were referring to me as "Crysicle It’s a TITLE, DUMBFUCK!!!" which would be certainly amusing.
Canada has no coal? Are you serious?
A drive through Sparwood and Elkford, BC (I was a surveyor there) would change his mind when he saw their BIIIGGG strip mine. Add to that the sight of the giant coal shipping terminal at Roberts Bank, BC, (right beside the Tsawwassen ferry terminal) where they export US coal for metallurgy.
look at gordonmcdowell's videos about MSRs
*cough cough* I think I got the black lung, pa *cough cough*
We will always have coal?...lol
Think we need to keep to use to make steel for centuries t come and save power production for more local/renewable job.
We had a coal gasification plant next to the Coolwater power plants In Daggett California long ago in the 80s
You didn't mention, that there is more energy in the ashes than in the coal. it comes in the form of Thucolite, Uranium, and Thorium, contained in the ashes of (most) coals. if this powerful raw material would be used in a high-temp MSR (molten salt reactor) the steam for Your coal-gasification could come from the nuclear part of this (huge >1700MW_electric, highly efficient >40% ) operation! Thus, a substantial reduction in CO2/MJ_el can and should be obtained.
it purely depends on the skills of engineers, politicians, banksters, and gangsters combined.
US coal is around 2PPM Uranium, that's 2g per ton of coal.
1000MW coal plant burns around 9000t of coal per day.
18kg of Uranium per day, about 6.5t per year.
Typical 1000MW thermal neutron reactor needs about 100t of Uranium to work, that's just over 15 years of capture.
But refueling is about 20-25t, maybe 4 years, which would coincide with refueling schedule.
So two 2000MW coal plants could feasibly create enough uranium to fuel a single reactor.
But it's a matter of economic efficiency; we COULD do it, but is it really worth it?
As far as using the uranium IN CYCLE, it simply doesn't work that way. You can't just react a few grams of uranium and extract enough thermal energy to make heat on the fly. You need BULK to generate enough heat, tonnes of uranium, and not just any uranium but enriched uranium. You need the right ratio of fissile uranium.. And thorium is useless until its converted to Th233, so you need a neutron source breed it into fuel.
In China, they have ash piles of 160-180PPM Uranium. A Canadian company, Sparton, has actually filtered Uranium from their ash and expects to be able to extract 1kg of uranium for about $77. That's $14/kg more than mining it, but can be worthwhile in light of logistical costs of importing uranium.
@@thundercactus thank You for the quantitative information.
if Nixon's Wahington had been more far-sighted and technically skilled, they wouldn't have set their bets on the wrong reactor-type, alas, the liquid-Na breeder (which tends to have fire-accidents), the Oak-Ridge MSRE would have been scaled up, and nowadays U-238 would be a fuel, not a radioactive waste! (see Ed Pheil's fast-neutrons MSR-reactor on GordonMcDowell's TH-cam channel) Nuclear energy can be more, than society needs (electrical, chemical. gas, even acetylene for Dupont or BASF, etc. could be possible), only Neutrino-emissions could and probably would be the limit (and asteroids, falling out of the sky, potentially onto a reactor!
The modern CO2-discussion ( is it discussion really? or is it an agenda ) is similarly narrow-minded and technological-unskilled, as back then.
I think "Coal" and "Nuclear" shouldn't be such rivals.
Soon the coal mining machines will be exactly like worms ,the electric plants will be mobile and will digest the coal as it's mined
There is no such thing as clean coal. Carbon capture never made it across the prototype stage.
Interesting to see that during the Industrial Revolution, coal was the placement of industry, and nowadays it can just be shipped around the globe to where labour is cheapest. No wonder we are heading for doom.
Are you kidding me, no coal in large ass africa, and the equator is the only escuse...? 😝😝
This hardly-disguisable, quasi-propaganda piece has been brought to you as a courtesy of the dirtiest and entrenched fossil-fuel vested interests from around the world. Sweet, beautiful and spotless coal, anyone?
And he goes on to state that we should go back to the Horse and Carriage.
Hrm. Clean coal slurry. Yum yum! Let's all die poisoning ourselves so intelligence can actually rise. Who's next? Bears, I say. Thanks Isaac!
Brought to you by:
Coal Producers of America
Lol!
I'm actually ok with using coal as an energy source.
Coal use seems dumb to me
@@CastleBomb44
Would you rather cut trees down and burn them for energy?
The burning of coal raises Co2 and helps trees and plants grow faster. In fact, the earth is greener as Co2 levels increased according to NASA.
www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth