Coal
Coal is a combustible material which was formed by decomposing plant and animal material placed under intense pressure.
The mining of coal as a fuel sparked the Industrial Revolution, as coal was used to power factories and railways, first through the generation of steam, and later when coal became one of several methods of generating electricity.
Types of coal
Four types of coal are:
- Anthracite - the cleanest burning coal, found in such regions as south Wales and northeast Pennsylvania.
- Bituminous coal - widely found in Appalachia and widely used, and does not burn as cleanly as anthracite.
- Sub-bituminous coal - of a lower grade than bituminous and a higher grade than lignite, and is widely mined in the Powder River Basin region of Wyoming.
- Lignite - also known as "brown coal", is the dirtiest burning, and is mainly used in power generation. The top two locations for lignite mining are Germany and Russia.
Graphite, used in pencils and as an electrical conductor, is technically a type of coal of an even higher grade than anthracite, but is not used as a fuel as it is hard to ignite.
Origins
Some young earth creationists believe that this pressure was caused by the Great Flood [1].
Recent finds such as the world's largest fossil forest in the Illinois Herrin coal bed, a 6-foot-thick strip mined by a subsidiary of Peabody Coal, would seem to cast doubt on this theory, as two other actively mined Illinois coal seams, the Danville and the Springfield, which sit above and below the Herrin, respectively, appear to be separated by about a half-million years of geological time. [2]