FIRST SLIDE COAL
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Coal is a black or brownish-black sedimentary rock that can be burned for fuel and used to
generate electricity. It is composed mostly of carbon and hydrocarbons, which contain energy that can
be released through combustion (burning).
Coal is the largest source of energy for generating electricity in the world. The conditions that would
eventually create coal began to develop about 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous period.
During this time, the Earth was covered in wide, shallow seas and dense forests. The seas occasionally
flooded the forested areas, trapping plants and algae at the bottom of a swampy wetland. Over time, the
plants (mostly mosses) and algae were buried and compressed under the weight of overlying mud
and vegetation.
As the plant debris sifted deeper under Earth’s surface, it encountered increased temperatures and
higher pressure. Mud and acidic water prevented the plant matter from coming into contact with oxygen.
Due to this, the plant matter decomposed at a very slow rate and retained most of its carbon (source of
energy).
Under
the
right
conditions, peat transforms
into coal through
a
process
called carbonization. Carbonization takes place under incredible heat and pressure. About 3 meters (10
feet) of layered vegetation eventually compresses into a third of a meter (1 foot) of coal!
Coal exists in underground formations called “coal seams” or “coal beds.” Coal seams exist on every
continent. The largest coal reserves are in the United States, Russia, China, Australia, and India.
SECOND SLIDE PEATIFICATION COALIFICATION
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The process that creates coal varies slightly in different areas depending on the plants and conditions
that are present, but the overall process is similar. There are two main phases in coal
formation: peatification and coalification. Bacterial activity is the main process that creates
the peat during peatification. Increasing temperature and pressure from burial are the main factors in
coalification.
PEATIFICATION. Peatification involves bacterial decay. Peat is soil-like, partially decayed plant material
that accumulates in wetlands. Most people learn that coal is formed in swamps, but this is not completely
accurate. The term “swamps” can be applied to many different types of wetlands, but coal only forms
from peat-accumulating wetlands. Hence, peat deposits form in wetlands, but not all wetlands form peat.
Peat-accumulating wetlands, also called peatlands or mires, include peat bogs, peat fens, and peat
forests.
For peat to accumulate, the accumulation of plant debris in a mire must exceed the rate of bacterial decay
of the plant debris. The process of partial decomposition of plant material in swampy, waterlogged
environments is called peatification.
The surface layer of most peats is dominated by aerobic bacterial decay (with oxygen) and detritus-eating
organisms, so has high decay rates. If conditions in a wetland don’t allow for peat accumulation to exceed
the rate of aerobic bacterial decay, or local rates of erosion, a peat will not accumulate or be preserved.
Under anaerobic (without oxygen) conditions, the bacterial decay rate is greatly reduced, and peat
accumulates.
COALIFICATION. When peats are buried, the weight of the overlying sediments squeezes out much of
the water from the peat and reduces its volume (called compaction). Continued burial deeper into the
earth also exposes the material to higher temperatures. Heating, and to a lesser extent, time and pressure
act on the buried peat to change it into coal.
THIRD SLIDE CLASSIFICATION OF COAL
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Coal is classified into four main types, or ranks: anthracite, bituminous, subbituminous, and lignite. The
ranking depends on the types and amounts of carbon the coal contains and on the amount of heat energy
the coal can produce. The rank of a coal deposit is determined by the amount of pressure and heat that
acted on the plants over time.
When this peat is deeply buried, water and other compounds is squeezed out from the increasing
pressure and the lowest quality of coal, lignite, begins for form.
Continued burial, resulting in increasing pressures and temperatures, causes this low-quality lignite coal
to be transformed into higher quality "black coals". First lignite becomes sub-bituminous coal,
then bituminous coal, and finally the highest quality anthracite coal. As these transformations occur, the
amount of water and other compounds in the coal decreases and the coal becomes denser. Along with
this comes a higher carbon concentration.
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LIGNITE contains 25%–35% carbon and has the lowest energy content of all coal ranks. Lignite coal
deposits tend to be relatively young and were not subjected to extreme heat or pressure. Lignite is
crumbly and has high moisture content, which contributes to its low heating value. Lignite is mostly used
to generate electricity.
SUB-BITUMINOUS COAL or black lignite is a category of coal which appears as grey-black or dark
brown. It ranges from hard to soft as it represents an intermediate stage between low quality lignite and
higher quality bituminous coal. The carbon content of sub-bituminous coal varies from 70-76%. Subbituminous coal is used in generating steam for the production of electricity, and thus frequently used in
power plants. Moreover, sub-bituminous coal can be liquefied and converted into petroleum and gas.
BITUMINOUS COAL is the second highest quality of coal (below anthracite) and the most abundant
type. Usually, bituminous coal comes from fairly old coal deposits (around 300 million years) and exhibits
a carbon content that ranges from 76-86%. It releases a significant amount of energy when burned. The
high carbon and low moisture content of this particular type of coal makes it ideal in the production
of steel and cement, as well as in electricity generation.
ANTHRACITE categorized as a dark black form of coal and the highest quality grade. It is very hard, has
a low moisture content—and a carbon content of nearly 95%. Also, anthracite is usually the oldest type
of coal, having formed from biomass that was buried 350 million years ago. Anthracite, also known as
"hard coal," is a black, shiny, and hard metamorphic rock formed under intense pressure and
temperature. When burned, anthracite can reach very high temperatures, making this fuel exceptional at
heating up quickly, releasing immense amounts of energy and burning very hot.
FOURTH SLIDE WAYS TO EXTRACT COAL
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SURFACE MINING. If coal is less than 61 meters (200 feet) underground, it can be extracted through
surface mining.
In surface mining, workers simply remove any overlying sediment, vegetation, and rock,
called overburden. Economically, surface mining is a cheaper option for extracting coal than
underground mining. About two and a half times as much coal can be extracted per worker, per hour,
than is possible with underground mining.
The environmental impacts of surface mining are dramatic. The landscape is literally torn apart,
destroying habitats and entire ecosystems.
Surface mining can also cause landslides and subsidence (when the ground begins to sink or cave in).
FIFTH SLIDE WAYS TO EXTRACT COAL
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UNDERGROUND MINING. Most of the world’s coal reserves are buried deep underground.
Underground mining, sometimes called deep mining, is a process that retrieves coal from deep below
the Earth’s surface—sometimes as far as 300 meters (1,000 feet). Miners travel by elevator down a mine
shaft to reach the depths of the mine, and operate heavy machinery that extracts the coal and moves it
above ground.
The immediate environmental impact of underground mining appears less dramatic than surface mining.
There is little overburden, but underground mining operations leave significant tailings. Tailings are the
often-toxic residue left over from the process of separating coal from gangue, or economically
unimportant minerals. Toxic coal tailings can pollute local water supplies.
To miners, the dangers of underground mining are serious. Underground explosions, suffocation from
lack of oxygen, or exposure to toxic gases are very real threats.
SIXTH SLIDE WHY USE FOSSIL FUEL
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EFFICIENCY: They are excellent as fuels
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With all the talk about how awful fossil fuels are, one relevant fact is almost invariably
forgotten. Fossil fuels are fantastic at their job; that is, producing energy. Earth’s fossil fuel
reserves were formed over millions of years as the organic material of ancient plants and
microorganisms (not dinosaurs) were compressed and heated into dense deposits of carbon—
basically reservoirs of condensed energy. For this reason fossil fuels are incredibly “energy
dense“, meaning a little bit of a fossil fuel can produce a whole lot of energy.
CONVENIENCE: They are ready-made
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As mentioned above, fossil fuels are the result of natural processes of millions of years. While it
took a long time to turn trees and ferns into coal, those millions of years have already passed and
we have nothing to do now but reap the rewards of eons. To unlock most alternative fuels (think
solar, geothermal, wind, etc…) we first have to figure out how to efficiently collect, transform, and
store the energy before we can even begin to think about using it. Fossil fuels, on the other hand,
require no such innovation.
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The work of collecting and storing the energy in fossil fuels has already been accomplished, and
all that’s now needed to access the abundant energy reservoir is the technology of fire. And
humans have known about fire for a lot longer than we’ve known about photovoltaics.
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This “ready-made” quality of fossil fuels also means that we can access their energy anywhere,
anytime. Unlike solar power which is dependent on cooperative weather and hampered by things
like night, fossil fuels can be used anywhere the appropriate infrastructure exists, regardless of
time, weather, or even geographical location. Very few alternative energy sources can compete
with fossil fuels when it comes to producing power “on-demand.”
LOGISTICS: They are well-established
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The last aspect of fossil fuels that makes them so hard to abandon is the fact that they have been
the main source energy in much of the world for the past two centuries.
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Everything from what we eat, to where we work, to what we wear, to how we get around. Think
about it the device you are using to read this blog. Think about the electricity that powers your
home and refrigerator. Most—if not every part—of our lives is completely dependent and
intertwined with the energy provided by fossil fuels.
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Since fossil fuels have been the dominate source of our energy during the entirety of the
development of the modern, industrialized world, all our systems—from production to
infrastructure to transportation to residential—are set up for their use. Switching to another
energy source would mean completely rethinking the way we live and the way we understand
energy.
SEVENTH SLIDE DISADVANTAGES
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Land degradation
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Unearthing, processing, and moving underground oil, gas, and coal deposits take an enormous
toll on our landscapes and ecosystems. The fossil fuel industry leases vast stretches of land for
infrastructure, such as wells, pipelines, and access roads, as well as facilities for processing,
waste storage, and waste disposal. In the case of strip mining, entire swaths of terrain—
including forests and whole mountaintops—are scraped and blasted away to expose
underground coal or oil. Even after operations cease, the nutrient-leached land will never return
to what it once was.
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As a result, critical wildlife habitat—land that is crucial for breeding and migration—ends
up fragmented and destroyed. Even animals able to leave can end up suffering, as they’re often
forced into less-than-ideal habitat and must compete with existing wildlife for resources.
Water pollution
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Emissions
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Coal, oil, and gas development pose great threats to our waterways and groundwater. Coal
mining operations wash toxic runoff into streams, rivers, and lakes and dump vast quantities of
unwanted rock and soil into streams. Oil spills and leaks during extraction or transport can pollute
drinking water sources and jeopardize entire freshwater or ocean ecosystems. Fracking and its
toxic fluids have also been found to contaminate drinking water.
Fossil fuels emit harmful air pollutants long before they’re burned. People who extract and use it
are exposed daily to toxic air pollution from active oil and gas wells and from transport and
processing facilities. These include benzene (linked to childhood leukemia and blood disorders)
and formaldehyde (a cancer-causing chemical).
Burning Fossil Fuels
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Global warming pollution
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When we burn oil, coal, and gas, we don’t just meet our energy needs—we drive the
current global warming crisis as well. Fossil fuels produce large quantities of carbon
dioxide when burned. Carbon emissions trap heat in the atmosphere and lead to climate
change.
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Other forms of air pollution
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Fossil fuels emit more than just carbon dioxide when burned. Coal-fired power plants singlehandedly generate 35 percent of dangerous mercury emissions. sulfur dioxide emissions (which
contribute to acid rain). Meanwhile, fossil fuel–powered cars, trucks, and boats are the main
contributors of poisonous carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide, which produces smog on hot days
and leads to respiratory illnesses from sustained exposure.
Ocean acidification
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When we burn oil, coal, and gas, we change the ocean’s basic chemistry, making it more acidic.
Our seas absorb as much as a quarter of all man-made carbon emissions.
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As the acidity in our waters goes up, the amount of calcium carbonate—a substance used by
oysters, lobsters, and countless other marine organisms to form shells—goes down. This can
slow growth rates, weaken shells, and imperil entire food chains.
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Ocean acidification impacts coastal communities as well.
FIRST SLIDE FOLD
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When a body of rock, especially sedimentary rock, is squeezed from the sides by tectonic forces, it is
likely to fracture and/or become faulted if it is cold and brittle, or become folded if it is warm enough to
behave in a plastic manner. Folds are a type of ductile deformation.
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Folds are a type of geological structure that is commonly observed in rocks. Folds form under varied
conditions of stress, pore pressure, and temperature gradient, as evidenced by their presence in
soft sediments. A fold is a geologic structure that is formed by layers or beds of rock being bent or folded.
SECOND SLIDE ANATOMY
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In a folded layer, a point can be found where curvature is maximum and one limb ends and the other li
mb starts from that point. This is the hinge point. When rocks occur in a sequence and their all-hinge
points are joined together, they make a line, called the hinge line. The hinge line is the point at which
the axial plane crosses the Earth's surface.
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Limbs are the portions on each side of the curving hinge zone that extends like arms or legs. The sides
of a fold are its limbs, The limbs meet in a region of curvature called the hinge zone.
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A fold’s axial surface is an imaginary surface that runs along the hinge zone and cuts the fold in half. The
axial plane is the plane that marks the center of the fold.
THIRD SLIDE ANTICLINE
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In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at
its core. Anticlines are folded rock formations that have an upwards convex shape.
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This means that anticlines look like a lowercase “n” or an uppercase “A” (“A is for Anticline” is a common
phrase for remembering the shape of anticline).
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They form from layers of rock that were originally horizontal and relatively flat. Pressure was exerted on
two, opposing sides of the rock layers, causing them to wrinkle and squish together.
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The layers rumple into a shape resembling a wavy line (or a series of sideways “S” shapes). The “n”
shaped parts of the formation, or the parts that open down, are the anticlines and the “u” parts (the part
that opens up) are the syncline.
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Anticlines can exist as a single fold or as a series of adjacent folds of alternating synclines and anticlines.
The 'limbs' of these folds can have slopes that are very steep. Since the rock layers of the anticline were
originally flat when they were formed, and the sides of the anticline folded down when the layers
deformed, the oldest rock is at the core or center of the anticline.
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The core and inner layers of an anticline can act as reservoirs for various fluids. Anticline formations can
be highly indicative of petroleum reservoirs in particular. This is especially true when the anticline is
formed from sedimentary rock layers. Anticlines form a structural trap that can capture pockets of
hydrocarbons in the bend of the arch. Impermeable rock beds, often referred to as seals or cap rock,
trap hydrocarbons in the anticline peak. This causes oil and natural gas to build up in the pore spaces of
the reservoir rock at the core of the arch. The lowest parts of the reservoir rock are often filled with salty
water, effectively sealing the hydrocarbons into the arch. Generally speaking, the largest oilfields occur
in anticlines containing sedimentary rock.
FOURTH SLIDE SYNCLINE
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A syncline is the downward arc or curve of a fold. A syncline is a concave geological fold, with layers
that dip downward toward the center of the structure. This arrangement is opposite to that of an
arching anticline.
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Provided that the syncline has not been overturned, strata within synclines have progressively younger
rock layers toward the center of the syncline, with the youngest layer at the fold's center or hinge. A Ushaped, upward-facing fold with younger rocks in its core.
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You can remember the difference between anticline and syncline by noting that anticlines form an “A”
shape, and synclines form the bottom of an “S.”
FIFTH SLIDE MONOCLINE
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Monoclines are, however, characteristic of regions in which sedimentary rocks have been deformed
by dip slip movement along vertical or steeply dipping faults in older and deeper rocks in other words,
a monocline is a simple “one step” bend in the rock layers wherein the oldest rocks are at the bottom,
and the youngest are at the top.
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Monoclines are often formed by localized deformation or warping in horizontal rock layers. This is most
often caused by movement on a fault in the rock layers underlying the monocline.
SIXTH SLIDE CHEVRON
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Chevron folds are a structural feature characterized by repeated well behaved folded beds with straight
limbs and sharp hinges. Well developed, these folds develop repeated set of V-shaped beds. They
develop in response to regional or local compressive stress.
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Chevron folding preferentially occurs when the bedding regularly alternates between contrasting
competences. characterized by alternating high-competence rock and low-competence rock.
In geology competence refers to the degree of resistance of rocks to deformation or flow.
SEVENTH SLIDE ISOCLINAL
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It is possible for rocks to be folded so tightly that the fold limbs are nearly parallel. A very tight fold, in
which the limbs are parallel or nearly parallel to one another is called an isoclinal fold.
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An isoclinal fold is a type of symmetrical fold. "Iso-" implies same, and "-cline" means angle, so isocline
is, by definition, a fold with the same angle. Isoclinal folds typically come in sets, with each hinge or axis
will have the same central axis angle as the others. These folds are aligned and parallel to one another.
EIGHT SLIDE RECUMBNENT
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Isoclinal folds that have been overturned to the extent that their limbs are nearly horizontal are
called recumbent folds. If your bedding and cleavage are dipping in the same direction, your fold
is overturned. If the bedding and cleavage are both close to horizontal (and part of a larger fold), then
you've likely got the limb of a recumbent fold.
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If the fold is sufficiently tilted that the beds on one side have been tilted past vertical nearly horizontal,
and are sloping in the same direction, the fold is overturned. The recumbent fold is a type of fold having
axial plane that is overturned. A recumbent fold has an essentially horizontal axial plane.
NINETH SLIDE DOMES AND BASINS
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A dome is a circular structure in which the center is uplifted compared to its surroundings. The oldest
layers are exposed in the center of the dome. A dome is a feature in structural geology consisting of
symmetrical anticlines that intersect each other at their respective apices. Intact, domes are distinct,
rounded, spherical-to-ellipsoidal-shaped protrusions on the Earth's surface. strata dip away from center
in all directions, oldest strata in center.
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When rocks bend downward in a circular structure, it is called a basin. If the rocks are eroded, the
youngest rocks are at the center. Basins can be enormous, like the Michigan Basin. strata dip toward
center in all directions, youngest strata in center.