Basic coal. The largest coal deposits in Russia, the most significant basins for the country's economy

Since ancient times, coal has been a source of energy for mankind, not the only one, but widely used. Sometimes it is compared to solar energy preserved in stone. It is burned to obtain heat for heating, heating water, converted into electricity at thermal stations, and used for smelting metals.

With the development of new technologies, people have learned to use coal not only to obtain energy by burning. The chemical industry has successfully mastered the production technology of rare metals - gallium and germanium. Composite carbon-graphite materials with a high carbon content, gaseous high-calorie fuel are extracted from it, and methods for the production of plastics are worked out. The lowest grade coal, its very fine fraction and coal dust recycle and, which are great for heating both industrial premises and private houses. Total via chemical processing hard coal produce more than 400 items of products, which can cost ten times more than the original product.

For several centuries, people have been actively using coal as a fuel for obtaining and converting energy, with the development chemical industry and the needs of rare and valuable materials in other industries, the need for coal is increasing. Therefore, exploration of new deposits is being intensively carried out, quarries and mines, enterprises for processing raw materials are being built.

Briefly about the origin of coal

On our planet, many millions of years ago, vegetation flourished in a humid climate. Since then, 210 ... 280 million years have passed. For thousands of years, millions of years, billions of tons of vegetation died off, accumulated at the bottom of the swamps, covered with layers of sediment. Slow decomposition in an oxygen-free atmosphere under powerful pressure of water, sand, other rocks, sometimes at high temperatures due to the proximity of magma, led to the petrification of the layers of this vegetation, with a gradual transformation into coal of varying degrees of coalification.

The main Russian deposits and mining of hard coal

There are more than 15 trillion tons of coal reserves on the planet. The largest mineral extraction comes from hard coal, at about 0.7 tons per person, which is more than 2.6 billion tons per year. In Russia, coal is available in different regions. It has different characteristics, features and depth of occurrence. Here are the largest and most successfully developed coal basins:

The active use of Siberian and Far Eastern deposits limits their remoteness from industrial European regions. In the western part of Russia, coal is also mined with excellent performance: in the Pechersk and Donetsk coal basins. In the Rostov region, local deposits are being actively developed, the most promising of them is Gukovskoye. Processing of coal from these deposits gives grades of coal High Quality- anthracites (AC and AO).

The main qualitative characteristics of hard coal

Different industries require different grades of coal. Its qualitative indicators vary over a wide range even for those that have the same marking and largely depend on the deposit. Therefore, enterprises, before purchasing coal, get acquainted with its physical characteristics:

According to the degree of enrichment, coal is divided into:

• - Concentrates (burned for heating in steam boilers and generating electricity);
• – Industrial products used in the metallurgical industry;
• - Sludge, in fact, it is a fine fraction (up to 6 mm) and dust after rock crushing. It is problematic to burn such fuel, therefore briquettes are formed from it, which have good performance characteristics and are used in domestic solid fuel boilers.

According to the degree of coalification:

• — Brown coal is partially formed bituminous coal. It has a low calorific value, crumbles during transportation and storage, has a tendency to spontaneous combustion;
• - Coal. Has many different brands(varieties) with different characteristics. It has a wide area of ​​use: metallurgy, energy, housing and communal services, chemical industry, etc.
• — Anthracite is the highest quality form of hard coal.

Compared to peat and coal, the calorific value of coal is higher. The most low heat combustion in brown coal, the highest - in anthracites. However, based on economic feasibility, ordinary coal is in great demand. It has the best combination of price and specific heat burning.

There are a lot of different characteristics of coal, but not all of them can be important when choosing coal for heating. In this case, it is important to know just a few key parameters: ash content, humidity and specific heat capacity. The sulfur content may be important. The rest are required when selecting raw materials for processing. What is important to know when choosing coal is the size: how large pieces are offered to you. This data is encrypted in the brand name.

Size classification:

Classification by brands and their brief description:

Depending on the characteristics of coal, its brand, type and fraction, it is stored different time. (There is a table in the article that shows the shelf life of coal depending on the deposit and brand).

Particular attention should be paid to the protection of coal during long-term storage (more than 6 months). In this case, a special coal shed or bunker is required, where the fuel will be protected from precipitation and direct sunlight.

Large piles of coal long-term storage require temperature control, since in the presence of fines in combination with moisture and high temperature are prone to spontaneous combustion. It is advisable to purchase Digital Thermometer and a thermocouple with a long cord, which is buried in the center of the coal pile. You need to check the temperature once or twice a week, because some grades of coal ignite spontaneously at very low temperatures: brown ones - at 40-60 ° C, the rest - 60-70 ° C. Rarely there are cases of spontaneous combustion of anthracites and semi-anthracites (in Russia such cases not registered).

Coal is a type of fossil fuel formed from parts of ancient plants underground without oxygen. Today we will visit one of the oldest enterprises in Kuzbass, where mining Coal mining in the subsoil area of ​​the mine has been carried out since 1917.

Welcome to the oldest enterprise in Kuzbass - Mine No. 12 LLC, located in a small mining town near Novokuznetsk - Kiselevsk.

Combine:

To form coal abundant accumulation of plant mass is necessary. It forms when rotting plant material accumulates faster than it can be bacterially decomposed. The ideal environment for this is created in swamps, where stagnant water, depleted in oxygen, prevents the vital activity of bacteria and thereby protects the plant mass from complete destruction.

In ancient peat bogs, starting from the Devonian period (about 416 million years ago), the same organic matter accumulated, from which fossil coals were formed without access to oxygen. Most commercial fossil coal deposits date from this period, although younger deposits also exist.

Coal cuts:

Coal mining methods depend on its depth. Development underway open way in coal mines, if the depth of the coal seam does not exceed 100 meters. There are also cases when it is advantageous to develop a coal deposit by an underground method. Mines are used to extract coal from great depths. The deepest mines in Russia extract coal from a level of just over 1,200 meters.

Loading:

Coal has its own label. Depending on the degree of conversion and the specific amount of carbon in coal, there are its four types: brown coals (lignites), hard coals, anthracites and graphites. AT Western countries there is a slightly different classification - lignites, sub-bituminous coals, bituminous coals, anthracites and graphites, respectively.

5.5% of the world's coal reserves are concentrated in Russia, which is more than 200 billion tons. Such a difference with the percentage of proven coal reserves (19%) is due to the fact that most of it is not suitable for development, as it is located in Siberia in the permafrost region. 70% falls on brown coal reserves.

The use of coal is varied. It is used as a household, energy fuel, raw material for the metallurgical and chemical industries, as well as for extracting rare and trace elements from it.

As for the Kuznetsk coal basin, Kuzbass is one of largest coal deposits in the world. Currently, the name "Kuzbass" is the second name of the Kemerovo region.

KOMATSU mining dump truck with a carrying capacity of 90 tons. But as the drivers say, it happens that they load more than 90

In total, we were in Kiselevsk for a week, most of the time we were filming. It can't get boring, it's really interesting.

When exposed to oxygen, coal ignites spontaneously. Well, or smokes, as in the photo:

Loading:

Bucket of a walking mining excavator:

Even at a career in regime time, everything looks prettier. But shooting is difficult, everything is in motion:

Walking excavator:

At night, throughout the quarry, you can see how coal burns in some areas:

Technics. Everyone has a plan that must be followed. Therefore, the movement in the quarry never stops.

Well, maybe at the end of the shift for half an hour or an hour

Bucket tracks:

One such wheel costs 700,000 rubles, so they try to clear the roads from sharp stones:

In the cab of the excavator:

50-ton BELAZ followed by 90-ton KOMATSU:

AT cab of a walking excavator. This is a whole room. There is a couch, a microwave, a samovar, a washbasin and a bunch of posters with naked girls on the walls:

And this is from his arrow. Height 27 meters:

The welder is repairing the ladle:

These machines drill the ground, and explosives are poured into the dug 12 meter holes, produce undermining of the rock. He does this so that the rock becomes looser, large strong layers are broken into small stones, which then become much easier to develop with an excavator:

Explosive. We were unable to film the explosion itself.

And now, when the coal is dug out, it is taken to the enrichment plant. Enrichment- a set of processes for the primary processing of raw materials, namely the separation of coal from waste rock and sorting:

Atmospheric inside:

A place where both coal and rock travel along a conveyor belt, and women (!) separate this rock from coal, collect it and throw it away. There are large enough pieces that women alone cannot cope and throw off pieces of the breed together. In the rest of the workshops, everything is automated:

Car dumper:

Coal warehouse:

Loading coal into wagons that will go to consumers. It was a report from Kuzbass.

Despite the fact that today alternative energy sources are being used more and more intensively, coal mining is an actual industry. One of the most important areas of application of this type of fuel is the operation of power plants. Coal deposits are located in various countries of the world, and 50 of them are active.

World coal deposits

The largest amount of coal is mined in the United States in deposits in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, in Illinois and Alabama, in Colorado, Wyoming and Texas. It produces hard and brown coal, as well as anthracites. The second place in the extraction of these minerals is occupied by Russia.

In third place in coal production is China. The largest Chinese deposits are located in the Shanxing coal basin, in the Great Chinese Plain, Datong, Yangtze, etc. A lot of coal is also mined in Australia - in the states of Queensland and New South Wales, near the city of Newcastle. India is a major coal producer, and the deposits are located in the northeast of the country.

Hard and brown coal has been mined in the Saar and Saxony, Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg deposits in Germany for more than 150 years. There are three coal basins in Ukraine: Dnieper, Donetsk, Lvov-Volyn. Anthracites, gas coal and coking coal are mined here. Sufficiently large-scale coal deposits are located in Canada and Uzbekistan, Colombia and Turkey, North Korea and in Thailand, Kazakhstan and Poland, the Czech Republic and South Africa.

Coal deposits in Russia

One third of the world's coal reserves are located on the territory of the Russian Federation. The largest number of deposits is located in the eastern part of the country, in Siberia. The largest Russian fields coal are as follows:

• Kuznetsk - a significant part of the basin lies in the Kemerovo region, where about 80% of coking and 56% of hard coal are mined;
• Kansk-Achinsk basin - 12% of brown coal is mined;
• Tunguska basin - located in part of Eastern Siberia, anthracites, brown and hard coal are mined;
• The Pechora basin is rich in coking coal;
• The Irkutsk-Cheremkhovo basin is a source of coal for Irkutsk enterprises.

Coal mining is a very promising sector of the economy today. Experts say that humanity consumes coal too intensively, so there is a threat that the world's reserves may soon be used up, but in some countries there are significant reserves of this mineral. Its consumption depends on the application, and if you reduce the consumption of coal, it will last for a longer time.

One of the largest branches of the fuel and energy complex is the coal industry.

Back in the era of the USSR, Russia became a recognized leader in the field of coal mining and processing. Here, coal deposits make up about 1/3 of the world's reserves, including brown, hard coal, and anthracites.

the Russian Federation ranks sixth in the world in terms of coal production, 2/3 of which is used to produce energy and heat, 1/3 - in the chemical industry, a small part is transported to Japan and South Korea. On average, more than 300 million tons per year are mined in the Russian coal basins.

Characteristics of deposits

If you look at the map of Russia, then over 90% of the deposits are located in the eastern part of the country, mainly in Siberia.

If we compare the volume of coal mined, its total amount, technical and geographical conditions, then the most significant of them can be called the Kuznetsk, Tunguska, Pechora and Irkutsk-Cheremkhovo basins.

, otherwise Kuzbass, is the largest coal basin in Russia and the largest in the world.

It is located in Western Siberia in a shallow intermountain basin. A large part of the basin belongs to the lands of the Kemerovo region.

A significant disadvantage is the geographical distance from the main consumers of fuel - Kamchatka, Sakhalin, the central regions of the country. It produces 56% of hard coal and about 80% of coking coal, approximately 200 million tons per year. The type of prey is open.

Kansk-Achinsk coal basin

Spread along the Trans-Siberian Railway on the territory of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Kemerovo and Irkutsk Regions. 12% of all Russian brown coal belongs to this basin, in 2012 its amount was 42 million tons.

According to information provided by geological exploration in 1979, the total coal reserves are 638 billion tons.

It should be noted that the local one is the cheapest due to its open-pit mining, has low transportability and is used to provide energy to local enterprises.

Tunguska coal basin

One of the largest and most promising basins in Russia, it occupies the territories of Yakutia, the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Irkutsk Region.

If you look at the map, you can see that this is more than half of Eastern Siberia.

The local coal reserves are about 2345 billion tons. Here lie hard and brown coal, a small amount of anthracites.

Currently, work in the basin is poorly conducted (due to poor knowledge of the field and the harsh climate). About 35.3 million tons are mined annually by the underground method.

Pechora basin

It is located on the western slope of the Pai-Khoi ridge, is part of the Nenets autonomous region and the Komi Republic. The main deposits are Vorkuta, Vorgashorskoye, Inta.

deposits for the most part are represented by high quality coking coal, due to extraction exclusively by the mine method.

12.6 million tons of coal are mined per year, which is 4% of the total. Consumers of solid fuels are enterprises of the North European part of Russia, in particular the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant.

Irkutsk-Cheremkhovo basin

It stretches along the Upper Sayan from Nizhneudinsk to Lake Baikal. It is divided into the Baikal and Sayan branches. The volume of extraction is 3.4%, the extraction method is open. The deposit is remote from large consumers, delivery is difficult, so local coal is used mainly at Irkutsk enterprises. The reserve is about 7.5 billion tons of coal.

Industry issues

Nowadays, active coal mining is carried out in the Kuznetsk, Kansk-Achinsk, Pechora and Irkutsk-Cheremkhovo basins, the development of the Tunguska basin is planned. The main mining method is open pit, this choice is due to its relative cheapness and safety for workers. The disadvantage of this method is that the quality of coal suffers greatly.

The main problem faced by the above basins is the difficulty of delivering fuel to remote regions, in connection with this, it is necessary to modernize the Siberian railways. Despite this, the coal industry is one of the most promising industries. Russian economy(According to a preliminary assessment, Russian coal deposits should last more than 500 years).