The Durham Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. [1] It is continuous with the Northumberland Coalfield to its north. It extends from Bishop Auckland in the south to the boundary with the county of Northumberland along the River Tyne in the north, beyond which is the Northumberland Coalfield. [2]
The two contiguous coalfield areas were often referred to as the Durham and Northumberland Coalfield(s) or as the Great Northern Coalfield. [3]
The following coal seams are recorded from the Durham coalfield. They are listed here in stratigraphic order with the youngest at the top and the oldest/deepest at the bottom: [4]
Upper Coal Measures
Middle Coal Measures
Lower Coal Measures
With the development of modern technology to produce energy and capture carbon dioxide by carbon capture and storage (CCS) [5] there is renewed interest in the exploitation [6] of the Durham Coalfield reserves by underground coal gasification. This is of strategic importance to local energy intensive industry such as the commodity chemical and steel members of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC). [7]
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands—called coal forests—that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. However, many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.
North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. The region covers an area of 8,592 km2 and in 2019 had a recorded population of nearly 2.7 million. There are four counties in the region: County Durham; Tyne and Wear; Northumberland and part of North Yorkshire. The largest settlements are Newcastle upon Tyne, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Gateshead, Darlington and Hartlepool. There are three conurbations in the region: Tyneside ; Wearside ; and Teesside. Only three settlements in the region have city status: Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland and Durham.
Synthetic fuel or synfuel is a liquid fuel, or sometimes gaseous fuel, obtained from syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, in which the syngas was derived from gasification of solid feedstocks such as coal or biomass or by reforming of natural gas.
Coal pollution mitigation, sometimes called clean coal, is a series of systems and technologies that seek to mitigate the health and environmental impact of coal; in particular air pollution from coal-fired power stations, and from coal burnt by heavy industry.
Underground coal gasification (UCG) is an industrial process which converts coal into product gas. UCG is an in-situ gasification process, carried out in non-mined coal seams using injection of oxidants and steam. The product gas is brought to the surface through production wells drilled from the surface.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon capture and sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) before it enters the atmosphere, transporting it, and storing it (carbon sequestration) for centuries or millennia. Usually the CO2 is captured from large point sources, such as a chemical plant or biomass power plant, and then stored in an underground geological formation. The aim is to prevent the release of CO2 from heavy industry with the intent of mitigating the effects of climate change. Although CO2 has been injected into geological formations for several decades for various purposes, including enhanced oil recovery, the long-term storage of CO2 is a relatively new concept. Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) and CCS are sometimes discussed collectively as carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS). This is because CCS is a relatively expensive process yielding a product with an intrinsic low value (i.e. CO2). Hence, carbon capture makes economically more sense when being combined with a utilization process where the cheap CO2 can be used to produce high-value chemicals to offset the high costs of capture operations.
An integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) is a technology using a high pressure gasifier to turn coal and other carbon based fuels into pressurized gas—synthesis gas (syngas). It can then remove impurities from the syngas prior to the electricity generation cycle. Some of these pollutants, such as sulfur, can be turned into re-usable byproducts through the Claus process. This results in lower emissions of sulfur dioxide, particulates, mercury, and in some cases carbon dioxide. With additional process equipment, a water-gas shift reaction can increase gasification efficiency and reduce carbon monoxide emissions by converting it to carbon dioxide. The resulting carbon dioxide from the shift reaction can be separated, compressed, and stored through sequestration. Excess heat from the primary combustion and syngas fired generation is then passed to a steam cycle, similar to a combined cycle gas turbine. This process results in improved thermodynamic efficiency compared to conventional pulverized coal combustion.
The South Yorkshire Coalfield is so named from its position within Yorkshire. It covers most of South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and a small part of North Yorkshire. The exposed coalfield outcrops in the Pennine foothills and dips under Permian rocks in the east. Its most famous coal seam is the Barnsley Bed. Coal has been mined from shallow seams and outcrops since medieval times and possibly earlier.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology that can capture carbon dioxide CO2 emissions produced from fossil fuels in electricity, industrial processes which prevents CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Carbon capture and storage is also used to sequester CO2 filtered out of natural gas from certain natural gas fields. While typically the CO2 has no value after being stored, Enhanced Oil Recovery uses CO2 to increase yield from declining oil fields.
The milestones for carbon capture and storage show the lack of commercial scale development and implementation of CCS over the years since the first carbon tax was imposed.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass and capturing and storing the carbon, thereby removing it from the atmosphere. The carbon in the biomass comes from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) which is extracted from the atmosphere by the biomass when it grows. Energy is extracted in useful forms (electricity, heat, biofuels, etc.) as the biomass is utilized through combustion, fermentation, pyrolysis or other conversion methods. Some of the carbon in the biomass is converted to CO2 or biochar which can then be stored by geologic sequestration or land application, respectively, enabling carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and making BECCS a negative emissions technology (NET).
The Kędzierzyn Zero-Emission Power and Chemical Complex is a proposed facility in Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland. It will combine power and heat generation with that of chemical products and carbon capture and storage. The project is proposed by a consortium of chemicals producer Zakłady Azotowe Kędzierzyn and electricity company Południowy Koncern Energetyczny. The plant will produce synthesis gas by gasification of hard coal. The produced gas will be used for power and heat generation or for production of chemicals. The plant will capture produced carbon dioxide (CO2), which will be stored in natural geological reservoirs or used as a raw material for production of synthesis fuels, fertilisers or plastics.
The Centre for Research into Earth Energy Systems is a Geo-Energy research centre at Durham University. The centre was formed in January 2006, and since then has won a research income of £1.3M per annum. The current Director of CeREES is Professor Jon Gluyas, co-author of textbook Petroleum Geoscience. The Centre is part of the multidisciplinary Durham Energy Institute. CeREES is one of only three academic members of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and is also a member of the Underground Coal Gasification Association.
Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times and occurred in many different parts of the country. Britain's coalfields are associated with Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Yorkshire, the Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, the East and West Midlands and Kent. After 1972, coal mining quickly collapsed and had practically disappeared by the 21st century. The consumption of coal – mostly for electricity – fell from 157 million tonnes in 1970 to 18 million tonnes in 2016, of which 77% was imported from Colombia, Russia, and the United States. Employment in coal mines fell from a peak of 1,191,000 in 1920 to 695,000 in 1956, 247,000 in 1976, 44,000 in 1993, and to 2,000 in 2015.
Hi-Gen Power was a London-based developer of projects combining underground coal gasification with carbon capture and storage and alkaline fuel cells. It was established in 2009 to commercialize alkaline fuel cells developed by the fuel cell manufacturer AFC Energy. It is affiliated with B9 Gas.
The Northumberland Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. It is continuous with the Durham Coalfield to its south. It extends from Shilbottle in the north to the boundary with County Durham along the River Tyne in the south, beyond which is the Durham Coalfield.
The Midgeholme Coalfield is a coalfield in Midgeholme, on the border of Cumbria with Northumberland in northern England. It is the largest of a series of small coalfields along the south side of the Tyne Valley and which are intermediate between the Northumberland and Durham Coalfields to the east and the Cumberland Coalfield to the west. Like the other small coalfields to its east, this small outlier of the Coal Measures at Midgeholme occurs on the Stublick-Ninety Fathom Fault System, a zone of faults defining the northern edge of the Alston Block otherwise known as the North Pennines. It is recorded that coal was being mined at Midgeholme in the early seventeenth century. In the 1830s coal trains were being hauled from Midgeholme Colliery along the Brampton Railway by Stephenson's Rocket. The early workings have left a legacy of spoil heaps, bell pits, shafts and adits. There is no current coal production. However in January 2014, Northumberland County Council gave planning permission for the open-cast extraction of 37,000 tonnes of coal at Halton Lea Gate. This may open the way for other applications to mine the coalfield. In 1990 a proposal to mine reserves of 60,000 tonnes of good-quality coal at Lambley, Northumberland was rejected, but the prospect for a successful application has now changed, since the Planning Inspector allowed the development to proceed at Halton Lea Gate on appeal.
The North East of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) is an economic cluster created following the industrial cluster ideas and strategy of Michael Porter. This Process Industry Cluster has been created by the chemistry using industries based in North East England where more than 1,400 companies are based in the supply chain of the sector. The sector has over 35,000 direct employees and some 190,000 indirect employees in the northeast of England and together they represent over one third of the industrial economy of the region. Companies in the Cluster manufacture 50% of the UK's Petrochemicals and 35% of the UK's Pharmaceuticals and they significantly contribute towards making the region the only net exporting region of the UK. The region has over £13 billion of exports.
The geology of Northumberland in northeast England includes a mix of sedimentary, intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks from the Palaeozoic and Cenozoic eras. Devonian age volcanic rocks and a granite pluton form the Cheviot massif. The geology of the rest of the county is characterised largely by a thick sequence of sedimentary rocks of Carboniferous age. These are intruded by both Permian and Palaeogene dykes and sills and the whole is overlain by unconsolidated sediments from the last ice age and the post-glacial period. The Whin Sill makes a significant impact on Northumberland's character and the former working of the Northumberland Coalfield significantly influenced the development of the county's economy. The county's geology contributes to a series of significant landscape features around which the Northumberland National Park was designated.
Coordinates: 54°50′19″N1°36′16″W / 54.8386°N 1.6045°W
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