A modern aerial photograph of a coal preparation plant
Coal preparation
Customers' coal-burning equipment demands fuel of particular qualities and colliery preparation plants provide it.
Not everything that comes out of the mine is coal. Mixed with the coal are shale, rock, dirt and bits of wood and metal. These are removed in the Coal Preparation Plant, a clean and modern building near the mine itself. Computers automatically control it and a small number of technicians supervise all the operations.
A huge magnet removes metal from the coal passing beneath it. Other machines wash, sort and separate until only coal remains. Giant screens sieve the coal into various size grades, ranging from large coal to dust. Size is very important. In your home, modern appliances are designed to burn a particular type and size of fuel and the industrial users of solid fuel are even more demanding. Whether they buy coal for space heating, making electricity, steam raising or industrial processes, they want to know exactly what they are getting and how the fuel will behave.
Not only are the size and the form of the fuel supplied important - so is the way in which it burns and the ash that it leaves. Coke oven operators, for example, demand and get coals with a very low ash and moisture content.
In short, today coal is produced and prepared for sale by mechanical or automated means and sold to customers whose equipment will take in and burn the coal mechanically, often by automation. The coal is graded, sized, blended and processed to fulfil precise requirements and is subjected to strict quality control.
An internal photograph of a coal preparation plant
Transporting coal
How the huge physical bulk of millions of tonnes of coal is delivered to customers all over Britain.
At most coal mines the newly won coal is handled by belt conveyors to the pit bottom, and then in coal winding skips to the surface. In drift mines where access to the pit bottom is through a sloping tunnel from the surface, belt conveyors carry the coal all the way from the coalface to the surface.
From the colliery surface to preparation plant the coal is carried by belt conveyor and from the coal preparation plant the railways take over. Thousands of wagons are used on the British railway system to carry coal from the colliery to marshalling yards and from there to individual Power stations.
Photograph of loading coal into locomotive wagons
Power stations take over 90 per cent of all the coal UK COAL produce. Railways carry huge tonnages in merry-go-round trains, which shuttle back and forth between mines and power stations. Coal wagons designed for mechanised handling, are part of the railway system and every week carry more than half a million tonnes to power stations.
Lorries, ships, and river and canal barges also play their part in distributing coal round Britain for homes, industry, public buildings and other customers. Special-purpose colliers and lighters transport coal by water.