Abandoned mine workings

Using more coal to produce hydrogen will have a number of environmental consequences. Coal mining itself causes numerous environmental issues, ranging from widespread land disturbance, soil erosion, dust, biodiversity impacts, waste piles, and so forth, to subsidence and abandoned mine workings. Once coal has been extracted, it needs to be moved from the mine to the power plant or other place of use. 

The amount of water held in a soil or rock mass depends on its reservoir storage properties (see Chapter 4) that, in turn, influence the amount of water that can drain into a tunnel. Isolated heavy flows of water may occur in association with faults, solution pipes and cavities, abandoned mine workings or even pockets of gravel. Tunnels driven under lakes, rivers and other surface bodies of water may tap a considerable volume of flow. Flow also may take place from a perched water table to a tunnel beneath. 

This paper presents data from a passive system implemented to treat the mine water from the abandoned mining site of Jales, in North Portugal. The layout of the plant comprises initial oxidation and neutralization in a limestone channel. The present work is focused on the resulting products that are generically named ochre-precipitates. 

Finings pond Fire damp Goaf Pond in which fittings arc settled out of suspension (synonym slimes dam) Explosive mixture of methane and air encountered in mine workings Brcccialcd mass of roof strata that has collapsed into an abandoned void in an... 

Micro-gravity meters have been used to detect subsurface voids such as caverns in limestone, or abandoned mine shafts or shallow workings (Styles and Thomas, 2001). Gravity lows are recorded over voids, and they are more notable over air-filled than water- or sediment-filled voids. 

Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 (40 U.S.C. App. 402). Authorizes Federal assistance in the construction of an Appalachian development highway system construction of multicounty demonstration health facilities, hospitals, regional health, diagnostic and treatment centers, and other facilities for health seal and fill voids in abandoned mines and to rehabilitate strip mine areas construction of school facilities for vocational education and to assist in construction of sewage treatment works. 

More recently, in October 2000, the Martin County Coal Corporation s Big Branch Refuse Impoundment near Inez, KY failed, releasing 1.16 x 10 m (306 x 10 gal) coal fines through the active mine works of the 1-C Mine. The Inez, KY inpoundment failure did not cause any deaths, but it did contaminate the Wolf Creek and Coldwater Fork, the Big Sandy River, and the Ohio River with coal fines, closing several water treatment facilities. The contamination extended over 100 miles downstream from the mine and the Impoundment [45]. With over 2300 coal fines impoundments, of which some 1500 are abandoned, more impoundment failures can be expected in the future. Since 1972 there has been at least one failure or partial failure annually [44]. 

Abandoned Active Adit Denotes a mine or part of a mine that is no longer being worked Denotes a mine or pan of a mine that is currently being worked 10 produce coal Subhorizontal tunnel connecting the uvtrfcmjj.t of an underground mine to the ground... 

Fig. 6. Map showing the distribution of underground workings in the Shilbottle Seam, Shilbottle Coalfield, Northumberland (UK), traces of extensional faults that had sufficient throw to disrupt mining, and positions of monitoring boreholes referred to in Table 7 and associated text Developed from abandonment plans and geological data held by the Coal Authority.

Wood, S. C., Younger, P. L. Robins, N. S. 1999. Long-term changes in the quality of polluted mine-water discharges from abandoned underground coal workings in Scotland. Quarterly Journal of... 

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