Coalwood, WV.

     Coalwood, West Virginia is located in McDowell County and was a company owned town founded by George Lafayette Carter in 1905. It is mainly recognized by the home town of The Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam and the movie October Sky based on the book. The first inhabitants of the area, though, founded the community of Snakeroot at the junction of Wolfpen Branch and Clear Fork Branch, and the post office was established on September 20, 1869. The Coalwood post office was founded on March 12, 1903, the same year that Carter purchased 20,000 acres of land for the underground coal reserves. He then founded Carter Coal Company, which is the mining company that owned the coal town. In 1904, work began on constructing the West Virginia Southwestern Railway from its junction with the Norfolk & Western at Gordon along the Tug Fork west of Roderfield. The 9 mile branch was completed to Coalwood and opened on April 10, 1905, and was owned and operated by the Norfold & Western as their Clear Fork Branch. The first shaft mine opened at Coalwood in 1914. The companies of Carter Coal and Coke Co, operated the mines and town at Coalwood until Consolidation Coal Co. purchased the operation in 1922. This arrangement lasted until 1933, when Consolidation Coal Co., in dire financial straits form fighting the UMWA, let the properties go back to Carter. As of the 1990 Census, the population was 900. It is estimated around 300-400 people lived there of the time the coal camp was being taken place. The Carter Coal Company and built offices, houses, a schoolhouse, the Carter Coal Company Store, a church, and more. Carter hired a dentist and a doctor to provide service to his miners. They were not paid in regular currency, but script. Most coal companies used this as a way to "trap" the miners, because they indeed could NOT use that specially made script anywhere else. In 1936, Carter died and the company was taken over by his son James, who in 1947 sold it to a group of industrialists who changed the company name to Olga Coal Company. In 1956 the Coalwood mine was connected underground to the nearby Caretta mine, which was also owned by Olga, and in 1959, Olga ceased bringing coal to the surface via Coalwood. At the peak of this boom, population reached of over 2,000.

Olga Company Coal Script formerly
used in Coalwood. 

In 1980, the Olga Coal Company was bought by the LTV Corporation, which closed Coalwood's mine in 1986. People still live in Coalwood, but have to depend on other jobs to make ends meet. The Big Store in Coalwood was torn down on March 29, 2008, by the owners of the historic Coalwood properties, Alawest, The tipple has been dismantled and the site of the old abandoned mine is now fenced in with a car wash adjacent to it and a convenience store across the highway.

October Sky Festival.
Once a year, in October, Coalwood hosted an October Sky festival in honor of the accomplishments of the Rocket Boys. Unfortunately, the Cape Coalwood Restoration Association announced that the 13th October Sky festival, had been the last one. 

Coalwood is still inhabited by many people making honest livings and earnings, just not by the Coalwood mines. Mines were shut down and boarded up near the 1980's, as well as many other historical land mines in the town. It is mainly a tourist attraction now an days. The Homer Hickman house has also been preserved for touring. But the Coalwood legend and history will forever stay. 

Surface Mining.

Surface Mining.

1. Strip Mining.

Strip Mining is used when coal is near the surface of when the overburden is unstable. As mining progresses, the overburden is placed in the previous mine cavity. The mining is done in long, narrow strips. The waste, dirt, and rock that they take off of the top of the next strip is to put on top of the last one. Explosives are put in holes and blasted. The sizes of the chunks usually matter, considering, the miners want to be able to move the larger pieces with machinery. Advantages include easier, faster work. Most of the time, bigger quantities. Disadvantages are it ends up hurting the areas around the strip mining. The rock, trees, gravel, vegetation, etc... is dumped into the mine or areas around the mine. When it rains, the rain floods the mine, travelling to water sources and contaminates the water. To reclaim land, mining companies need to fix the land how it was before hand. Different mineral ores and coal is mined this way. 

2. Contour Mining.

Contour mining is a type of surface mining that follows the contour of a hill or mountain leaving terraces in the mountainside. This method is often used in areas that has steep terrain. The limitations of contour mining are both economical and technical. When the operation reaches a predetermined stripping ratio, it is not profitable to continue(disadvantage). Depending on the equipment available, it may not be technically feasible to exceed a certain height of high wall(disadvantage). At this point, it is possible to produce more coal with the augering method in which spiral drills bore tunnels into highwall laterally from the bench to extract coal without removing the overburden. This method could highly benefit states with such mountainous ranges(advantage). 




3. Mountaintop Removal. 
Tops of hills are removes to access horizontal  coal seams. Overburden is pushed to areas between high elevators. Following reclamation, the original contour is not restored. This is the most controversial mining method(advantage). This method of mining usually leaves mountain tops to flat plateaus. Many ecosystems and habitats are largely damaged and possibly permanently damaged. This method could cover up or stop flowing streams which could disrupt other actions being used with the stream.  


Hyperlink to access more knowledge on this subject.


Photocredits:
(Strip Mining) library.thinkquest.org
(Contour Mining) contourmining.com
(Mountaintop Removal) mountainroadshow.com

Underground Coal Mining.

                                                          
Underground Coal Mining. 

There are 5 types/ways of underground coal mining. 

1: Drift Mining.

Drift Mining is possible where the coal seam intersects the surface. The mine enters the seam in a horizontal direction following the coal. A drift may or may not intersect the ground surface. This kind of mining is done when the rock or mineral is on the side of a hill. The advantages is drift mining is much cheaper and much safer. Drift mining also has vertical access shafts. It is also much easier to transport ore out of the mine itself. Some disadvantages include the possibility of flooding. You can drain a drift mine with water, and still work as long as the adit is not blocked. 

2. Shaft Mining.

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Shaft Mining is the most common method accessing a coal seam in which elevators provide access to mines. Shaft coal mines in West Virginia are commonly deeper than 1,000 ft below the surface. (Also deepest form of underground mining.) Coal, gold, and copper are commonly mined in this form. When the ore is dynamited and broken into chunks, it is then put on a type of pulley system to be loaded into trucks. Much faster and conventional, would be an advantage. Also, moving air ventilates the gases that are naturally underground, for safer breathing. A disadvantage to this is tunnels are deepened and the mine is made larger until there isn't any ore left, or it costs too much money to get it out. Most shaft mines are filled and blocked with cement to prevent the land around it from sinking and rotting away. It's the safer way to close a mine. 

3. Room & Pillar Mining. 
Nearly half the coal is left behind to support the mine roof. The pillars can "squeeze" putting pressure on adjacent pillars leading to the to collapse. Roof falls are a constant danger. It is used to mine coal, iron, metal substances, soda ash, and potash. Disadvantages include a lot of mining/work, to have not a lot to come out with. The pillars help hold the roof up, yet can easily fall none the less. Advantages is it can be much faster than some mining. The pillars are removed or pulled to the front of the mine, to let it collapse behind to close it. 

4: Continuous Mining.
Machines can be used with drift or room & pillar mines. One miner can operate a continuous miner to a rotating steel drum with tungsten carbide teeth to mine 5 tons of coal per minute. Varieties of continuous mining machines have been in use since the 1940's. Advantages are it produces the lowest cost per ton a customer. Continuous mining accounts for about 45% of the underground mining. Disadvantages are not a lot of roof support. It's slowly become one of the more efficient way to mine.




5: Longwall Mining.

Highly efficient. Huge mining machines support the roof with hydraulics as it removes the coal. Once the coal is removed, the machine retreats allowing the roof to fall behind it. It extracts much more of the coal than the room & pillar mining techniques. Advantages include better resource recovery, fewer roof support, the miners' safety is better when they are extracting coal. Some disadvantages are, when the mining is done, and the hydraulics are taken away, the roof collapses, and could have a very severe, damaging impact of rivers and foundations of building. 

Hyperlink to access more knowledge.

Picture credits go to:
 (Drift Mining) en.wikipedia.org
 (Shaft Mining) dogcanyon.org
 (Room & Pillar Mining) mitchellpays.com
 (Continuous Mining) ohiovalleycoal.com
 (Longwall Mining) coalleader.com 

Aerosols Effect on U.H.I.E and G.E.

    How do aerosols effect climate change through the Urban Heat Island Effect and Greenhouse Effect?  

     Well, to start, aerosols are tiny particles suspended in the air, both natural and industrial, including sea salt, mineral dust, ash, soot, sulphates, nitrates, and black carbon. They hang around in the air for around 10 days, scattering and absorbing radiation from the sun. Aerosols also provide nuclei for water droplets, boosting cloud formation, thus decreasing the amount of energy reaching the ground and providing a net cooling force. In short, greenhouse gases warm the surface; aerosols cool the surface. A greenhouse gas (sometimes abbreviated GHG) is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect.  The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Aerosols, via clouds, reduce energy reaching the ocean, contributing a net cooling effect to both the surface and subsurface ocean temperature. In the U.K. model, the aerosol’s cooling effect is so strong it even cancels out any greenhouse gas-induced warming. However, actual observations show a much warmer ocean. Thus we are left with the knowledge that action to address the greenhouse gas versus aerosol problem will likely have to proceed without precise quantification of their respective temperature effects on climate.  

Coal Formation

                                                   How Coal Was Formed.
The plants which formed coal captured energy from the sun through photosynthesis to create the compounds that make up plant tissues. The most important element in the plant material is carbon, which gives coal most of its energy. Most of our coal was formed about 300 million years ago, when much of the earth was covered by steamy swamps. As plants and trees died, their remains sank to the bottom of the swampy areas burying layer upon layer and eventually forming a soggy, dense material called peat. Pressure caused by their weight squeezed water from the peat. Increasingly deeper burial and the heat associated with it gradually changed the material to coal.

                                                   Stages of Development.
1. Forest and Bog: Low land water accumulated above the trees and vegetation. It does not have any definite shape. It is a jelly like material. It is grayish in color. It does not have any structure because it is not solidified. All the structure that is present in the original plant are present in the bog mass.

2. Peat:It has not yet attained the hardness as coal, is friable in nature. It does not have any definite structure. Peat has not yet been affected by heat and pressure. It is purely sedimentary in nature. It is light, porous and fibrous substance light grayish brown to dark brown color

3. Lignite: It is fragile and breaks into powder on handling. It is dull brown to blackish brown in
color. It does not have any clear structure. Since it is very little affected by heat and pressure, it has not attained and design. Some much more matured lignite has within it the macerals. Some of the lower rank lignite possesses clear remains of plant structures. Since it is very near to low rank coal, its heat value is quite
substantial.

4. Bituminous: It has been formed due to slow application of heat and static pressure. It is pitch to dark black in color. The physical properties of bituminous coal are determined by the percentage
distribution of macerals groups, such as vitrain, clarin, durain and fusain. Bituminous coal covers a wide range of variety, from low volatile, low moisture to high volatile; high moisture. It is considered as all purpose coal because of its excellent heating quality. Calorific value ranges between 11000-15000 B.Th.U (6100-
8300 K.Cal/kg).