The Oil Drum

A week ago I wrote about coal mining, using what is known as "Room and Pillar" techniques, which is the most common method of getting the coal from underground mines in the Untied States. However it can leave rather a large percentage of the coal in the ground, after mining is over. How do we get more of it out?

The answer is known as "Longwall Mining" and that will be the subject of the post today. It is the method that is most commonly used in other countries to mine the coal, but to give you an understanding of how it can work, it might be useful to explain, as I did last week, a little history. This, for those of you who are new to the site, is a Weekend technical talk, where some of the underlying ways in which fossil energy is recovered are described. Earlier posts dealt with oilwell operations, and you can find where to find them at the bottom of this post. We're probably going to wander, via surface mining, in-situ combustion and CTL towards refining as the next few weeks roll by.