Report of Investigations 9345: Burnout Control at the Albright Coal Waste Bank Fire

Details

• Journal Article:
  Pittsburgh, PA: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, RI 9345
• Personal Author:
  Bayles, Larry G. ; Chaiken, Robert F.
• Description:
  Burnout control is a process developed by the U.S. Bureau of Mines for accelerating the burning of wasted coal fires in situ, while at the same time controlling the heat and fumes produced. The Albright fire project is a first field trial of burnout control as applied to a coal waste bank. An exhaust ventilation system was designed and constructed and then operated over a 1-year period at the site of an existing abandoned mine land fire near the town of Albright, West Virginia. While predicted exhaust gas temperatures of 900 deg c and thermal power levels of 5 mw were achieved at 20- to 30-in h2o vacuum levels, problems were encountered with engineering designs, equipment breakdown, and fuel-rich combustion that curtailed the time period of satisfactory operation. Effective afterburning of the exhaust gasses (as they were drawn from the bank) corrected the problems associated with combustion stoichiometry and led to high thermal outputs. It is believed that with (1) improvements in engineering design and construction, (2) better control of the afterburning process, and (3) the use of conventional stack gas air- pollution controls, burnout control can be applied successfully to a coal waste bank fire. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Coal Coal Mining Mining Occupational Health Safety Vehicle Emissions
• Keywords:
  Mine-ventilation; Combustion-control; Burnout; Burning-rate; Burning-time; Combustion; Exhaust-gases; Mine-fires; In-situ-combustion; Coal-mines
• Source:
  Pittsburgh, PA: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, RI 9345, 1991 Jan; :1-29
• Series:
  NIOSH Numbered Publications   ; Mining Publications  
• Subseries:
  Report of Investigations
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Report
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; Pennsylvania ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  PRC - Pittsburgh Research Center
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  35 pdf pages
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:10008555
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB92-177393
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1991
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:166796b376aea0d0c3081f9faa0234fd7898ac56211e90727c37b93dd77c097339cbde1578b1fc280d27dcfbb6f1d329a06ea8f34706a4036210d95e89871225
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/10335/cdc_10335_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 16.85 MB ]