Why the Wood ?

Hello soo being new to Coal , I have a few questions about quality of coal, 1 why is there wood in my pea coal it seems to have a lot of wood, is that a good thing or bad thing , I know when I was trying diifrent coal size out to burn the bagged coal had no wood in it , I only bought about 1/2 ton of bulk , but I will be needing more soon , should I go back there being there is so much wood in the coal ? or should I find another dealer and what should I be looking for when purchasing coal , thanks for reading...

Wood is a common contaminant of coal. It probably comes from being near wood waste or trees as it is piled on the ground. Since you are buying in bulk it is difficult to know if the source was the distributor or the mine.

I used to get small pieces of wood all the time when I bought pea in bulk. It wasn't enough though to cause me any concern. I have also seen wood in bagged coal but it is usually smaller and there is less of it.

Wood can also be from the timbers in the mine if it is deep mined coal. Some companies are stripping old deep mine sites and pull timbers out as well as coal. Some wood can also find it's way into the coal during processing.

Now Im learning , Yes that would make sense , it does seem that the wood is old ,but from the moisture it holds ,its hard to tell and the coloration of living with coal , but if I had to deturnin the specias of would I could not ,but it is utility pole like or railroad tie like. thank you .

The problem with the wood is you get one larger piece mixed in with the coal and it makes millions of little pieces once it gets to crusher. They try and pick that output beforehand but once it goes through crusher it's now fuel.

When the coal is going into the truck with the pea and nut you can pick some of it out, that's why you'll see big piles of little pieces of wood next to where they load the high lifts.

With my handfed or the Alaska carpet feed the small pieces of wood are not a problem, they are fuel. I could see it being a problem with an auger feed.

No problem with the auger, shouldn't be a problem with anything because they are sized the same as the coal.

I meant larger pieces of wood getting jammed in between the auger and the tube, I don't know if the auger could break the piece of wood or a shear pin would break.

Yes if it's bigger it will mess something up but you won't have anything larger than the coal unless it gets in there after they process it or something is screwed up like a hole in a screen.

That's what I was thinking about. By far the cleanest and best coal I have had so far this season is from Harmony, nothing but coal, haven't found anything else in it yet.

Wood'nCoal wrote:I meant larger pieces of wood getting jammed in between the auger and the tube, I don't know if the auger could break the piece of wood or a shear pin would break.

It only takes a little more then 2 lbs of torque to break the shear pin so the pin would break first stopping the auger from moving anymore before the auger could break wood burns