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Introduction

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Spontaneous Combustion of Coal

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Abstract

Coal, as a fuel, has the potential to start burning itself without being artificially ignited when certain conditions are present. Spontaneous combustion of coal has posed a serious safety threat in the coal industry and other related industries. Hazards, accidents, and impacts of this issue as current global scenarios are introduced. In the USA 97 underground coal fires were caused by coal self-heating from 1952 to 1999.

A total of 125 incidents resulted from coal self-heating occurred in the New South Wales state of Australia during the period from 1960 to 1991. More recently, on 13 May 2014, an explosion at Eynez coal mine in Soma, Manisa, Turkey, caused 301 people killed in the worst mine disaster in Turkey’s history. The potential causal factors contributing to self-heating in terms of intrinsic (chemical structure, coal composition parameters, pyrite porosity, and coal rank) and extrinsic factors (humidity, particle size, aging effect, etc.) of coal are summarized.

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  1. Department of Safety Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

    Xinyang Wang

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Wang, X. (2020). Introduction. In: Spontaneous Combustion of Coal. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33691-2_1

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