1 00:00:00,012 --> 00:00:05,967 This is a continuation of Energy 101 and today we're going to look at energy 2 00:00:05,967 --> 00:00:12,127 sources, where we get the energy from that we so desperately want, that we've 3 00:00:12,127 --> 00:00:16,567 talked about before. And today we're going to hone in on coal. 4 00:00:16,567 --> 00:00:25,839 we see from our pie chart from previously that 20% of our energy that we use comes 5 00:00:25,839 --> 00:00:34,594 from coal, 26% from natural gas, 36% from oil, nuclear 9%, and then we have some 6 00:00:34,594 --> 00:00:39,300 renewables. biomass and hydro being the major ones. 7 00:00:39,300 --> 00:00:44,871 Biomass is burning of lot of, waste coming out of the paper pulp and paper 8 00:00:44,871 --> 00:00:49,786 plants for instance. and then you have wind and geothermal and 9 00:00:49,786 --> 00:00:52,992 solar. you notice solar is about 6 times less 10 00:00:52,992 --> 00:00:56,322 than wind. That's because of economics, generally. 11 00:00:56,322 --> 00:01:01,347 So today we're going to talk about coal and where it comes from and how we get it 12 00:01:01,347 --> 00:01:06,467 and what some of the characteristics are. what is coal? Well, coal is a solid 13 00:01:06,467 --> 00:01:11,428 chunk, and coal by the way was the fuel that followed wood. 14 00:01:11,428 --> 00:01:19,352 Wood was the first energy that caveman used to started cooking his food with 15 00:01:19,352 --> 00:01:26,642 wood, and then coal came into play and we started getting more and more of our 16 00:01:26,642 --> 00:01:31,737 energy from coal. coal is an organic sedimary, seditenmary 17 00:01:31,737 --> 00:01:36,942 rock, it forms mainly from plant debris over thousands of years. 18 00:01:36,942 --> 00:01:43,195 and it consists mainly of carbon. Coal doesn't have any hydrogen in it. 19 00:01:43,195 --> 00:01:49,655 We still include it in hydrocarbons, which indicates it's got both carbon and 20 00:01:49,655 --> 00:01:54,160 hydrogen. the other fossil fuels do have hydrogen 21 00:01:54,160 --> 00:02:00,910 in them but coal only has carbon in it. So it, it's, some people like to think 22 00:02:00,910 --> 00:02:06,647 that coal is being renewed and oil and gas is being renewed over time, which it 23 00:02:06,647 --> 00:02:12,434 is, but at a very, very, very slow rate. It's just infinitesimal how fast it's 24 00:02:12,434 --> 00:02:16,577 being formed to compared to how fast we're using it. 25 00:02:16,577 --> 00:02:24,283 That's so it, it's definitely a finite resource from the time scale that, that 26 00:02:24,283 --> 00:02:28,522 we are using it. so that's some of the basic 27 00:02:28,522 --> 00:02:34,715 characteristics of coal. what do we do with it? As all the fossil 28 00:02:34,715 --> 00:02:40,723 fuels that we use today, we react the carbon that's in the coal with oxygen 29 00:02:40,723 --> 00:02:44,719 that's in the air. And that forms CO2 and the chemical 30 00:02:44,719 --> 00:02:50,470 energy on the right hand side of the equation is less than the chemical energy 31 00:02:50,470 --> 00:02:54,441 of the 2 independent molecules of the left hand side. 32 00:02:54,441 --> 00:02:59,194 That means we're releasing the chemical energy content. 33 00:02:59,194 --> 00:03:04,353 And it is being released as heat, or comes off as a flame. 34 00:03:04,353 --> 00:03:09,433 And of course, the flame is hot, and we get heat from it. 35 00:03:09,433 --> 00:03:16,094 We can heat our homes with it, we can make steam, we can cook with it, etc. 36 00:03:16,094 --> 00:03:22,473 so how do we get this coal? Well, there are two basic means by which we get coal. 37 00:03:22,473 --> 00:03:27,961 One is open mines in which we just go from the top of the Earth, and dig dig 38 00:03:27,961 --> 00:03:31,948 down in an open pit, and mine it out of the open mine. 39 00:03:31,948 --> 00:03:37,662 And then there are underground mines. We started primary with underground 40 00:03:37,662 --> 00:03:41,177 mines. and coal miners worked underground for 41 00:03:41,177 --> 00:03:45,982 long hours and in order to extract coal from underground mines. 42 00:03:45,982 --> 00:03:50,997 This is just a shot of one of the shafts going down into a coal mine. 43 00:03:50,997 --> 00:03:57,092 There are many coal miners, particularly, in the winter months, in the Northern 44 00:03:57,092 --> 00:04:03,347 Hemisphere, never see the light of day. When they're, during the days they're 45 00:04:03,347 --> 00:04:09,360 working they go down in the mines before sun comes up and, come, they come back 46 00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:13,454 after the sun has set. So it's it's a difficult working 47 00:04:13,454 --> 00:04:17,388 environment. it's, it's methane, will tend to be 48 00:04:17,388 --> 00:04:23,231 released as you mine the coal and break open the, break the coal away from the 49 00:04:23,231 --> 00:04:26,602 walls. And you have to be careful with that. 50 00:04:26,602 --> 00:04:31,298 It can cause explosions. The dust from the coal can, can cause 51 00:04:31,298 --> 00:04:35,463 explosions. Coal dust explosions, and you breath the 52 00:04:35,463 --> 00:04:41,518 coal dust is not good for your lungs. So it's a difficult working environment. 53 00:04:41,518 --> 00:04:45,161 They've gone recently a lot to open pit mining. 54 00:04:45,161 --> 00:04:51,129 Here's an open pit that's shown from just dug down and you have roads that wind 55 00:04:51,129 --> 00:04:57,420 down into the bottom of the mine, and they clear off the dirt from the top of 56 00:04:57,420 --> 00:05:04,537 the coal and then go down and dig the coal out with big shovels such as, well, 57 00:05:04,537 --> 00:05:09,469 such as this. And, load it onto mining trucks. 58 00:05:09,469 --> 00:05:16,418 And haul it back up out of the mine to the surface, and then put it on 59 00:05:16,418 --> 00:05:23,439 trains and carry it away. this is another shot of of a rena, a, 60 00:05:23,439 --> 00:05:31,232 open pit coal mine on the left that has been closed and has been restored. 61 00:05:31,232 --> 00:05:36,937 Of course, the dirt hasn't been put back on, it's been pushed off into the 62 00:05:36,937 --> 00:05:40,581 valleys. But the grass, as you can see has been 63 00:05:40,581 --> 00:05:44,753 planted there. And on the right hand side we have some 64 00:05:44,753 --> 00:05:50,722 active open pit coal mines. And you get residue ponds first, and you 65 00:05:50,722 --> 00:05:57,947 get water that comes out that's got arsenic's and mercury poisons in them. 66 00:05:57,947 --> 00:06:04,702 So it's the coal is a difficult fuel from a, from an environmental impact on 67 00:06:04,702 --> 00:06:10,052 getting it out of the ground no matter which way we go, whether it's underground 68 00:06:10,052 --> 00:06:14,927 and through mines. Underground mines or an open pit mining. 69 00:06:14,927 --> 00:06:21,091 it comes out of the mines or the, or the, open pits and it's put on trains. 70 00:06:21,091 --> 00:06:28,639 train hauling, train, companies, railroad companies rely substantially on the base 71 00:06:28,639 --> 00:06:34,108 business of just hauling coal. from the mines to the power plants. 72 00:06:34,108 --> 00:06:39,820 Electric power plants is where most of the coal is being used we'll see in just 73 00:06:39,820 --> 00:06:45,831 a minute and during a, for the summer months in particular when the coal power 74 00:06:45,831 --> 00:06:51,872 plant is running wide open, which is not unusual since they're the last power 75 00:06:51,872 --> 00:06:57,295 plant could generally be shut down when the demand decreases. 76 00:06:57,295 --> 00:07:02,942 They they're using about 100 train load cars of coal a day. 77 00:07:02,942 --> 00:07:08,848 So you have to bring in a hundred coal cars such as these everyday to keep the 78 00:07:08,848 --> 00:07:12,871 power plant supplied with fuel. So it's a massive operation. 79 00:07:12,871 --> 00:07:16,821 That's just for one coal power plant, electric power plant. 80 00:07:16,821 --> 00:07:22,162 But it's a major, major industry both on the mining side, the transport side, and 81 00:07:22,162 --> 00:07:26,454 of course the power plant side. We'll look at some of the missions 82 00:07:26,454 --> 00:07:31,305 characteristics of the different fuels. We'll hold that to talk about the 83 00:07:31,305 --> 00:07:34,482 environmental impacts in general seperately. 84 00:07:34,482 --> 00:07:42,476 But coal is a actually one of the few and basically the only one of any, any 85 00:07:42,476 --> 00:07:49,252 significant numbers that we export. We actually export about 8% of the coal 86 00:07:49,252 --> 00:07:56,512 that we mine and all, so all of the coal that we consume is produced in the US. 87 00:07:56,512 --> 00:08:02,566 Here domestically and we actually are, actually mine about 8% more that is 88 00:08:02,566 --> 00:08:06,613 shipped out to other countries for their use. 89 00:08:06,613 --> 00:08:13,672 So we're, we're totally independent of other nations regarding Coal unlike oil, 90 00:08:13,672 --> 00:08:19,372 which we'll see later on. how do we use the coal? As I mentioned, 91 00:08:19,372 --> 00:08:23,112 most of it's used for electric power plants. 92 00:08:23,112 --> 00:08:29,832 about 93% is used for going to these power plants where they can use 100 train 93 00:08:29,832 --> 00:08:34,082 loads of coal a day, industry for [UNKNOWN]. 94 00:08:34,082 --> 00:08:39,532 Reasons in general, use about 6.5% and commercial buildings actually are some of 95 00:08:39,532 --> 00:08:43,857 them still heated by coal. Very very few percentage, it's such a 96 00:08:43,857 --> 00:08:49,282 handling problem to get the coal into the basement of the building and put it into 97 00:08:49,282 --> 00:08:54,162 a furnace and create the steam that goes around the building to heat it. 98 00:08:54,162 --> 00:09:01,222 But that, those were the primary utilizations in use that we have. 99 00:09:01,222 --> 00:09:07,306 Where the coal goes. One thing I wanted to mention, that I 100 00:09:07,306 --> 00:09:13,562 didn't say earlier. And that is, is that, on the, there's a 101 00:09:13,562 --> 00:09:20,901 different environmental impact other than the air emissions that come off of 102 00:09:20,901 --> 00:09:25,692 burning the coal. once the coal is burned you have ash, 103 00:09:25,692 --> 00:09:31,679 coal ash that's got arsenics and mercury in it, and poisons in their solid 104 00:09:31,679 --> 00:09:38,159 particles from, that, that, that don't burn and they have to get rid of them 105 00:09:38,159 --> 00:09:43,226 from the boiler. The, and the firebox and they put them in 106 00:09:43,226 --> 00:09:47,391 ponds. And, these are ta, toxic hash bonds, coal 107 00:09:47,391 --> 00:09:51,051 has bonds. And every once an a while, 1 will 108 00:09:51,051 --> 00:09:55,191 rupture. And, the pond will break, the pond will 109 00:09:55,191 --> 00:10:00,307 break that holds it in. And when, this happened about 5 years ago 110 00:10:00,307 --> 00:10:04,107 with TVA. And this is a picture of, of, where a 111 00:10:04,107 --> 00:10:08,707 house was almost covered up by these, by this ash pond spill. 112 00:10:08,707 --> 00:10:14,522 it's a terrible toxic situation. It polluted the river that it obviously 113 00:10:14,522 --> 00:10:19,133 ran into. it's just one more aspect to coal that we 114 00:10:19,133 --> 00:10:22,960 have to worry about and deal with. Thank you. 115 00:10:22,960 --> 00:10:26,508 We'll talk about the natural gas next time.