What Is This Coal?

Hi All,
I figured out what my briquettes were, and burning them straight, I get nice blue dancing flames and a clean burn. Now I have this other stuff that is very clean and hard (photo shows a big piece of this together with some nut anthracite). It shears when hit with a hammer. No dust. Burns good but smokes and stinks like bit at startup. Is this your normal bit?

I figured it out with help from my friend Larry T of Chubby fame, is it cannel coal. Same conchoidal fracture as anthracite, hard, kind of shiny, but lights easy and burns smoky with a bright flame.

yup, stuff on the left is cannel coal, comprised of mostly the remains of spores, usually it has from 10-20% ash and burns with a bright yellow or white smokey (and sometimes not smokey depending on the particulars of the cannel coal) flame. It's rarely found, and when it is, usually only in thin uneconomical seams (rarely mined today). It will average around 60 % volitle content vs. bituminous coal's 30% and anthracite's <10%

I've seen that coal around me. Usually mixed in with gravel. Which is odd. I never thought it was coal just a weird rock.

Cannel Coal works really well in a open fireplace too, due to the same properties described by Berlin.

It was mined around my location here some years back.
There is even an area near here called Cannelton, PA

Cannel coal was discovered there in 1832 and mined there for many decades as there was a "pocket" varying from 3 to 22 feet thick.
The market for this cannel coal was NYC and was transported through river canals to the Great Lakes then on to NYC for it's oil properties.

Below the cannel coal was a foot thick vein of bit coal in high demand for blacksmiths of the time.

Sometime later cannel coal was just a nuisance as it was in the way when the clay mining company went to mine the clay for the brick companies that where once here. The best clays for brick making were located directly under the cannel coal seams.

Great info write-up my friend