Coal in Ukraine

Coal is the most com­mon type of fuel found on all con­ti­nents of the Earth. Before its dis­cov­ery, human­i­ty only used wood, so this find­ing allowed for sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments in indus­try due to the greater ener­gy effi­cien­cy of coal com­pared to wood. Coal makes up to 87.5% of the Earth­’s fos­sil fuel.

Cur­rent­ly, the glob­al role of coal has some­what decreased because many devel­oped coun­tries have already aban­doned it due to its low effi­cien­cy and envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion result­ing from its use. From a chem­i­cal point of view, coal is most­ly car­bon, which reacts with oxy­gen when burned, form­ing CO2. When released into the atmos­phere, it caus­es the so-called green­house effect, which leads to droughts, increased water lev­els, abnor­mal weath­er, and lim­i­ta­tions on bio­cenoses.

Over time, the role of coal in meet­ing the ener­gy needs of human­i­ty has grad­u­al­ly declined. For exam­ple, in 1860, coal account­ed for approx­i­mate­ly 50% of human­i­ty’s elec­tric­i­ty needs, in 1930 — about 33%, and now — only 25%, and this fig­ure con­tin­ues to decline. How­ev­er, con­sid­er­ing the glob­al amount of coal reserves, which far exceeds the reserves of oil and gas, they could play a sig­nif­i­cant role in address­ing the grow­ing demand for ener­gy resources in the future.

All known coal deposits were formed as a result of high tem­per­a­tures and pres­sure deep under­ground. The old­est of the coal deposits dates back to approx­i­mate­ly 400 mil­lion years ago. The most active coal for­ma­tion occurred dur­ing the Car­bonif­er­ous peri­od, which dates back over 380 mil­lion years and last­ed 65–70 mil­lion years.

The for­ma­tion of fos­sil coal in the depths of the earth is a fair­ly lengthy process that has much in com­mon with the for­ma­tion of hydro­car­bon deposits. How­ev­er, before the dis­cov­ery of meth­ods for obtain­ing com­bustible liq­uids, coal itself served as the main source of heat and energy.Fossil coal is formed when plant remains accu­mu­late faster than they can be decom­posed by bac­te­ria. The opti­mal con­di­tions for this occur in swampy regions, where the low oxy­gen and acidic con­tent of the water hin­der the active repro­duc­tion of microor­gan­isms and thus pro­tect plant remains from accel­er­at­ed decom­po­si­tion. This is how peat, the pri­ma­ry prod­uct for the gen­e­sis of coal, is formed. If the peat is lat­er cov­ered by sed­i­ment, a series of fac­tors will reduce its poros­i­ty and mois­ture con­tent, and it will grad­u­al­ly trans­form into coal.

Coal has many direc­tions of use, includ­ing for the pro­duc­tion of oth­er mate­ri­als. For exam­ple, the pro­duc­tion of plas­tics, coke, elec­tric­i­ty, and agglom­er­a­tion of iron ores would not be pos­si­ble with­out the use of coal. Dur­ing enrich­ment, acti­vat­ed car­bon, arti­fi­cial graphite, vana­di­um, ger­ma­ni­um, sul­fur, gal­li­um, molyb­de­num, zinc, lead, and oth­er ele­ments are also obtained. Despite the above, the main con­sumers of coal are still ther­mal pow­er plants (42%), met­al­lur­gy (20%), and the munic­i­pal and house­hold sec­tor (16%). One of the most promis­ing direc­tions for the use of coal is its con­ver­sion into liq­uid fuel. There are also sev­er­al ways of non-ener­gy use of coal based on ther­mo­chem­i­cal pro­cess­ing for its opti­mal use and nature con­ser­va­tion.

As pro­duc­tion increas­es, the pro­por­tion of coal that is bri­quet­ted and enriched also increas­es. The growth in the sig­nif­i­cance of this sec­tor is due to the need to increase its qual­i­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics, which deter­mine the fea­si­bil­i­ty of its use. In addi­tion, due to the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of min­ing con­di­tions and the mech­a­niza­tion of pro­duc­tion, its qual­i­ty indi­ca­tors in terms of par­ti­cle size dis­tri­b­u­tion, mois­ture con­tent, sul­fur, and ash con­tent dete­ri­o­rate sig­nif­i­cant­ly. To meet the needs of the econ­o­my, Ukraine uses about 100 mil­lion tons of coal annu­al­ly, of which about 80 mil­lion tons are extract­ed from domes­tic deposits. Today, 3772.1 mil­lion tons of coal are con­sumed annu­al­ly in the world, and in Ukraine, this fig­ure is 26.2 mil­lion tons.

Coal min­ing is one of the most well-known types of fuel in our coun­try, which is active­ly used both for domes­tic pur­pos­es and in indus­try. It is cho­sen for its afford­able cost, long burn­ing time, and the abil­i­ty to be used in mod­ern boil­ers, includ­ing auto­mat­ed ones. The his­to­ry of coal min­ing in Ukraine spans over 120 years. The largest explored areas of coal in Ukraine are con­cen­trat­ed in the Donet­sk and Lviv-Volyn coal basins.

In Ukraine, there are 17 types of coal that are mined, which allows for clear con­trol of prod­uct qual­i­ty, as well as form­ing prices and using fuel in the most ratio­nal way. The most wide­spread types of coal based on qual­i­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics are: “A” (anthracite), “B” (brown), “G” (gas), “D” (long-flame), “DG” (long-flame gas), “Zh” (fat), “K” (coke), “PS” (fri­able-sparkling) and “P” (fri­able). There are also oth­er com­bined and inter­me­di­ate types of coal.

Coal is dis­trib­uted accord­ing to its par­ti­cle size, with the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: plate (over 100 mm), fist (50–100 mm), fist-nut (25–100 mm), nut (25–50 mm), seed (6–13 mm) and stove (0–6 mm).

Thus, our coun­try has sig­nif­i­cant resources for the extrac­tion of all types of coal. How­ev­er, there are cer­tain risks asso­ci­at­ed with the com­plex geo­log­i­cal struc­ture of regions, the insta­bil­i­ty of coal seams, sig­nif­i­cant depths of occur­rence, and the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the qual­i­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics of coal due to neg­a­tive changes in min­ing-geo­log­i­cal con­di­tions of pro­duc­tion and mech­a­niza­tion. There­fore, the extrac­tion and enrich­ment of this fos­sil fuel require tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ment and more mod­ern tech­ni­cal equip­ment for coal mines and quar­ries.

The Insti­tute of Geol­o­gy is always ready to guide poten­tial investors from the idea of min­ing min­er­als to an active coal min­ing enter­prise.