How would you calculate the amount of power utilized in a typical coal mining process?

[Nate1093]

Suppose you have a typical coal mining process composed of the following steps:

(1) Excavation -> (2) Crushing -> (3) Storage -> (4) Rail -> (5) Power Station

The idea is the coal is excavated out of the ground, crushed and processed, stored, and finally transported by a diesel train to a power station. It is very simplistic and probably missing some steps, but it's just for ease of calculation purposes.

Now I'm interesting in finding the energy loss in each component of this process, scaled down to 1KW.

For example, if I start of with 1KW at the beginning of the process (step 1), how much usable power would be available for me at the end (step 5)?

 

[miningman]

What is the waste / dirt content of the mined coal?? 10% or 40%??? What is the haulage distance from the mine to the plant?? 2 kilometers or 102 kilometers?? What is the moisture content of the coal as delivered to the plant??? Unless / until you address these questions, your original query is analagous the the infamous " How long is a piece of string?" query

 

[Compositepro]

Well you are not going to get the right answer if you ask the wrong question. The answer to your question will be given in kW-hr/ton not kW. Do you understand the difference between the concepts of power and energy?

 

[LittleInch]

I understand the basic question but you frame it very badly.

What I think you mean is for every say tonne of coal, which yields a certain about of electrical energy, how much energy is consumed in getting that tonne of coal from the ground to the power station??

Clearly less than a factor of 1.

I'm sure someone has already worked this out before though??

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[wattyeng]

You would calculate the same as you would for anything - gather all appropriate data and do the maths!

I.Eng MIMMM MIET MIPowerE AIOSH