Publication Date

7-1985

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

John Riley, John Reasoner, Laurence Boucher

Degree Program

Department of Chemistry

Degree Type

Master of Science

Abstract

Self-heating in coal has been studied for well over one hundred years, yet there is no accurate or reliable method for predicting the potential of certain coals to undergo self-heating. Fires caused by self-heating, and eventually spontaneous combustion, have occurred in the high wall of surface mines, in underground mines, in coal stockpiles, and on trains, barges and ships. Self-heating in coal is brought about through a complex interplay of conditions depending on the specific properties of the coal as well as many external factors involved in the mining and handling of coal.

In a study supported by the United States Department of Transportation and monitored by the United States Coast Guard, data on over 2000 barges of coal was incorporated into a data bank. Results from the evaluation of these data and from a barging study, in which a research crew accompanied a tow of barges from western Kentucky to the New Orleans area, were used to make recommendations to minimize self-heating in barged coal.

An inexpensive adiabatic calorimeter (accelerating rate calorimeter) was constructed and used to obtain supporting

laboratory data on coal samples collected in the barging study. There is very good agreement between the results obtained with the calorimeter concerning the reactivity of coals and susceptibility of the coals to undergo selfheating as would be predicted using chemical and physical data from the data bank.

Disciplines

Analytical Chemistry | Chemistry | Physical Sciences and Mathematics

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