Lookee here....

Go here. Make sure you browse both pages (two and three). Also, the pics are clickable to higher resolution.
http://www.geocities.com/scrantonsteam/coal2.html

Fascinating. Great pictures.

My question is this: With all the breakers abandoned and/or torn down years ago, what is left to process anthracite coal today? Were new, more modern breakers built?

As oil prices (and all other energy prices) go up, I think anthracite will make a small comeback. Is there enough production capacity to meet demand?

Obviously, more mines can be reactivated and breakers built, but what is the incentive?

chris

In this area there is a few smaller ones compared to ones of yesteryear but they were all built within the last 20-30 years, the one I'm currently gtting my coal from was built to run a massive culm bank. Now it only processes raw coal which is all shipped in.

There is a few others south of here but I'm not familiar with them.

Recently they even had a smaller breaker they built then rebuilt on two sites to run a few other banks. This was used for power plants... It's been since dismantled for scrap.

That's what I've been wondering. The new rash of rice burning stokekr stoves seem to have been built to burn the 'waste' coal processed from the old culm banks. Once these culm banks have all been reprocessed for the rice coal, what's left? If there is no new coal being mined to support the demand, either there will be a lack of supply or a huge increase in cost.

Chris

As long as they keep mining and processing coal they will be making more culm.

europachris wrote:That's what I've been wondering. The new rash of rice burning stokekr stoves seem to have been built to burn the 'waste' coal processed from the old culm banks. Once these culm banks have all been reprocessed for the rice coal, what's left?

Well I don't know where you got that idea but the rice, at least what I'm delivering, is from fresh mined coal. It's generated during the entire process, every time you break it rice or other sizes are produced from the mine right up until comes out the other end of the breaker.

When it gets to the breaker it has varying sizes from dust to pieces that can weigh hundreds of pounds. The first thing they do is separate anything nut or smaller which goes right on the conveyor. The larger pieces are crushed down to nut size (or whatever else is made such as rice) and join the coal that has already been sized. From there it goes off to be separated from the rock then finally off to be sized...

*** one thing to note is the place I'm getting my coal from doesn't make stove coal, if they did it would instead be initially sized for stove.

[quote="NEPAForum Admin]Well I don't know where you got that idea but the rice, at least what I'm delivering, is from fresh mined coal. It's generated during the entire process, every time you break it rice or other sizes are produced from the mine right up until comes out the other end of the breaker. [/quote]

I recall reading somewhere that much if not most of the rice coal was being 'mined' from the old culm banks. Previously much of the fine sizes were not useable in home heating 'back in the day' so it just became waste until the rice stokers were developed to burn it.

That's only what I read. I don't have any firsthand experience, and currently I'm just a wannabe coal burner out here in coal no-mans-land.

Chris

europachris wrote:My question is this: With all the breakers abandoned and/or torn down years ago, what is left to process anthracite coal today? Were new, more modern breakers built?

The newest large breaker was built in 1997. It's the Girard breaker is located along Route 54 between village of Lost Creek and Girardville borough. It was built by the Girard Estate and operated by the Girard Coal Company. Girard Coal closed in 2002. The breaker was sold to The Reading Anthracite Co which closed the breaker it was using and moved coal processing to the Girard breaker.

I wouldn't worry. If there is a market for coal the investment dollars will follow. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to build a coal breaker than an oil refinery. The United States has continuing energy demand that in the near term can only be meet by coal. Almost all will be bituminous but anthracite will have a small part too.

Yanche

If you're looking for photos of a modern day anthracite breaker/mine, the aforementioned Girard is seen here.
Granted, it another business's website pitching hole making machinery...but the pics are clickable to higher resolution.


http://www.numahammers.com/newsitems/PS-girardcoalmining.html

Banks do not have enough to recover, it's simply not feasible to make it the specs you would need to burn at home hence the reason most of it goes to power plants.

Go figure!!!!!

Look at the collection this German guy has! It's a true .de site too.

http://www.der-foerderturm.de/penna/coal-breaker-galerie.htm

Gary in Pennsylvania wrote: It's a true .de site too.

What did you say?

I mean it's truly some guy in Germany.

Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain
And scroll down. It has a list of all the world's county domain names.

We are soooo used to .com, we tend to not realize that .com is just the tip of the internet iceburg.

.de has it's origin in Germany.

While this is way off topic one of the most fascinating stories about domain names is that of the Tuvalu Islands. It's assigned domain name is or more correctly was .tv. The nine islands are in the South Pacific north of New Zealand and east of Australia. The country sold their domain name! Investors paid big $$ for it and now the income from it is the largest source of income for Tuvalu. From their web site:
"Since 1999, Tuvalu has been able to earn over several million dollars a year marketing it's Internet domain name through the American company .TV Corporation. Tuvalu's unique suffix, ".TV", attracts interest from many individuals, entities and television companies around the world, and some have been willing to pay large sums for internet addresses such as http://www.china.tv or http://www.nbc4.tv. The scheme got off to a rough start, but has now proven to be the largest source of income for the nation."

Read about the country at: http://www.tuvaluislands.com/

Yanche