This is a continuation of Energy 101 and 
today we're going to look at energy 
sources, where we get the energy from 
that we so desperately want, that we've 
talked about before. 
And today we're going to hone in on coal. 
we see from our pie chart from previously 
that 20% of our energy that we use comes 
from coal, 26% from natural gas, 36% from 
oil, nuclear 9%, and then we have some 
renewables. 
biomass and hydro being the major ones. 
Biomass is burning of lot of, waste 
coming out of the paper pulp and paper 
plants for instance. 
and then you have wind and geothermal and 
solar. 
you notice solar is about 6 times less 
than wind. 
That's because of economics, generally. 
So today we're going to talk about coal 
and where it comes from and how we get it 
and what some of the characteristics are. 
what is coal? Well, coal is a solid 
chunk, and coal by the way was the fuel 
that followed wood. 
Wood was the first energy that caveman 
used to started cooking his food with 
wood, and then coal came into play and we 
started getting more and more of our 
energy from coal. 
coal is an organic sedimary, seditenmary 
rock, it forms mainly from plant debris 
over thousands of years. 
and it consists mainly of carbon. 
Coal doesn't have any hydrogen in it. 
We still include it in hydrocarbons, 
which indicates it's got both carbon and 
hydrogen. 
the other fossil fuels do have hydrogen 
in them but coal only has carbon in it. 
So it, it's, some people like to think 
that coal is being renewed and oil and 
gas is being renewed over time, which it 
is, but at a very, very, very slow rate. 
It's just infinitesimal how fast it's 
being formed to compared to how fast 
we're using it. 
That's so it, it's definitely a finite 
resource from the time scale that, that 
we are using it. 
so that's some of the basic 
characteristics of coal. 
what do we do with it? As all the fossil 
fuels that we use today, we react the 
carbon that's in the coal with oxygen 
that's in the air. 
And that forms CO2 and the chemical 
energy on the right hand side of the 
equation is less than the chemical energy 
of the 2 independent molecules of the 
left hand side. 
That means we're releasing the chemical 
energy content. 
And it is being released as heat, or 
comes off as a flame. 
And of course, the flame is hot, and we 
get heat from it. 
We can heat our homes with it, we can 
make steam, we can cook with it, etc. 
so how do we get this coal? Well, there 
are two basic means by which we get coal. 
One is open mines in which we just go 
from the top of the Earth, and dig dig 
down in an open pit, and mine it out of 
the open mine. 
And then there are underground mines. 
We started primary with underground 
mines. 
and coal miners worked underground for 
long hours and in order to extract coal 
from underground mines. 
This is just a shot of one of the shafts 
going down into a coal mine. 
There are many coal miners, particularly, 
in the winter months, in the Northern 
Hemisphere, never see the light of day. 
When they're, during the days they're 
working they go down in the mines before 
sun comes up and, come, they come back 
after the sun has set. 
So it's it's a difficult working 
environment. 
it's, it's methane, will tend to be 
released as you mine the coal and break 
open the, break the coal away from the 
walls. 
And you have to be careful with that. 
It can cause explosions. 
The dust from the coal can, can cause 
explosions. 
Coal dust explosions, and you breath the 
coal dust is not good for your lungs. 
So it's a difficult working environment. 
They've gone recently a lot to open pit 
mining. 
Here's an open pit that's shown from just 
dug down and you have roads that wind 
down into the bottom of the mine, and 
they clear off the dirt from the top of 
the coal and then go down and dig the 
coal out with big shovels such as, well, 
such as this. 
And, load it onto mining trucks. 
And haul it back up out of the 
mine to the surface, and then put it on 
trains and carry it away. 
this is another shot of of a rena, a, 
open pit coal mine on the left that has 
been closed and has been restored. 
Of course, the dirt hasn't been put back 
on, it's been pushed off into the 
valleys. 
But the grass, as you can see has been 
planted there. 
And on the right hand side we have some 
active open pit coal mines. 
And you get residue ponds first, and you 
get water that comes out that's got 
arsenic's and mercury poisons in them. 
So it's the coal is a difficult fuel from 
a, from an environmental impact on 
getting it out of the ground no matter 
which way we go, whether it's underground 
and through mines. 
Underground mines or an open pit mining. 
it comes out of the mines or the, or the, 
open pits and it's put on trains. 
train hauling, train, companies, railroad 
companies rely substantially on the base 
business of just hauling coal. 
from the mines to the power plants. 
Electric power plants is where most of 
the coal is being used we'll see in just 
a minute and during a, for the summer 
months in particular when the coal power 
plant is running wide open, which is not 
unusual since they're the last power 
plant could generally be shut down when 
the demand decreases. 
They they're using about 100 train load 
cars of coal a day. 
So you have to bring in a hundred coal 
cars such as these everyday to keep the 
power plant supplied with fuel. 
So it's a massive operation. 
That's just for one coal power plant, 
electric power plant. 
But it's a major, major industry both on 
the mining side, the transport side, and 
of course the power plant side. 
We'll look at some of the missions 
characteristics of the different fuels. 
We'll hold that to talk about the 
environmental impacts in general 
seperately. 
But coal is a actually one of the few and 
basically the only one of any, any 
significant numbers that we export. 
We actually export about 8% of the coal 
that we mine and all, so all of the coal 
that we consume is produced in the US. 
Here domestically and we actually are, 
actually mine about 8% more that is 
shipped out to other countries for their 
use. 
So we're, we're totally independent of 
other nations regarding Coal unlike oil, 
which we'll see later on. 
how do we use the coal? As I mentioned, 
most of it's used for electric power 
plants. 
about 93% is used for going to these 
power plants where they can use 100 train 
loads of coal a day, industry for 
[UNKNOWN]. 
Reasons in general, use about 6.5% and 
commercial buildings actually are some of 
them still heated by coal. 
Very very few percentage, it's such a 
handling problem to get the coal into the 
basement of the building and put it into 
a furnace and create the steam that goes 
around the building to heat it. 
But that, those were the primary 
utilizations in use that we have. 
Where the coal goes. 
One thing I wanted to mention, that I 
didn't say earlier. 
And that is, is that, on the, there's a 
different environmental impact other than 
the air emissions that come off of 
burning the coal. 
once the coal is burned you have ash, 
coal ash that's got arsenics and mercury 
in it, and poisons in their solid 
particles from, that, that, that don't 
burn and they have to get rid of them 
from the boiler. 
The, and the firebox and they put them in 
ponds. 
And, these are ta, toxic hash bonds, coal 
has bonds. 
And every once an a while, 1 will 
rupture. 
And, the pond will break, the pond will 
break that holds it in. 
And when, this happened about 5 years ago 
with TVA. 
And this is a picture of, of, where a 
house was almost covered up by these, by 
this ash pond spill. 
it's a terrible toxic situation. 
It polluted the river that it obviously 
ran into. 
it's just one more aspect to coal that we 
have to worry about and deal with. 
Thank you. 
We'll talk about the natural gas next 
time.