Coal Storage – Need of Coal Storage Sheds & it’s Transportation

Coal is used as one of the fossil fuel which is combustible black/ brown hard rock usually found in coal beds. Coal is composed of 65-95% carbon, with quantities of other elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur and oxygen. Extracted from the ground by coal mining, coal is the biggest source of energy for the worldwide electricity generation. In simple terms, there exist four types of coal – peat, lignite (brown coal), bituminous, and anthracite (highest quality coal). Coke is one of the important and useful type of coal carrying less impurities and high carbon content. Coke (also called petroleum coke) is naturally occurred as well as man-made.

Few Facts about Coal Storage

1. Near about 70% of world steel production done through coal burning.
2. Coal-fired power stations produce environment-friendly electricity.
3. About 94% of the fossil fuel energy reserve in United States employ coal.

Need of Coal Storage Sheds

Industrially coal is stored in large quantities and needs stacking in open areas. ‘Meeting the customer demands’, ‘Production in mild climatic condition and market it in winter season’, ‘Feed the thermal power stations continuously’ are some of the key reasons for coal storage and lignite storage

Main motive of coal storage sheds is to produce efficient industrial outcome from coal by avoiding problems faced in coal stacking like oxidation of coal, spontaneous combustion, self-heating of coal, increase in moisture and many more.

Keeping various factors into account  for bulk storage such as storage area design, dimensions, climate conditions and required machinery for procurement, some stacking techniques are employed which are helpful in discharging operations economically and potentially.