As I mentioned in summarizing the Conference from last week, it seems as though, whether willingly or not, we are going to be seeing a lot of black coal in our energy future. I have written a couple of technical talks about coal mining in the past, and, if I can, I’ll move references to them into The Book later on today, along with the petroleum ones. (The coal ones are in Chapter 10, the oil production ones in Chapter 3.2).

The Chinese have just bought another longwall mining system, but instead of the shearer that I had described in the earlier longwall piece these systems will use a plow system to mine the coal. So I thought I would explain what those machines are, why it is interesting to see the Chinese using them (and why) and then perhaps close with a little note on fires underground. And perhaps have a little comment on EROI thrown in along the way. The plow also featured in the recent Washington Post story on coal mining.