Talk:Lignite

Ash content
The ash content for the lignite is way lower than the lignite used for power production in Eastern Europe and other places. Lignite with up to 40% ash content (when dry) is used and there is bibliography and links about this. However, I don't know if the figures given in the wikipedia page are ash content for water-free lignite or for lignite as is (with 40-60% water) so I don't edit it. Please be more specific. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apavlides24 (talk • contribs) 12:48, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

brown coal
Lignite. See Brown coal.

Types of Lignite The three "types" of Lignite listed under the header Types of Lignite all have links referring to the paragraph they are contained in.

"xyloid lignite or fossil wood and the second form is the compact lignite or perfect lignite." I have removed the links. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ptrask (talk • contribs) 14:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Germany
According to a report from Federal Ministry for the Environment,Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (In Germany) the contribuition from Lignite in power production was a lot higher. 151.1 TWh in 2006 (23.7%), 155.1 TWh in 2007 (24.4) and 150.8 TWh in 2008 (23.7%). Where does the numner 11% come from I wonder? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ki98mama (talk • contribs) 09:38, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * May be "total power" vs "electricity only". Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:23, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Chemistry
Hmm, I was hoping for a bit more of chemistry and scientific facts, such as the chemical composition, distribution on carbon and other elements, perhaps an illustration showing what the composistion looks like on atomic scale - if that is possible? Is there an expert on the subject who can provide some of that? :-) Medico80 08:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

coking
Can't you coke the stuff? 132.205.44.5 (talk) 04:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * yes, but to get usable coke for metallurgical uses you have to get quite "creative" - the only ones who ever did that were the East Germans. Hobbitschuster (talk) 07:35, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

image
I try to insert a second picture, but i failed. I like this



or this most impressive panorama --Entrophie (talk) 20:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Close up Image
I am going to try and find an image that is close-up of this Mineraloid

Denton22 (talk) 17:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Hazelwood Power Station
I do not know enough if adding Australia to the end of Hazelwood Power Station, Victoria will break the link, but it does need to be done, as it is quite confusing on first read as to where the powerstation is located. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.117.251.4 (talk) 16:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Technological advance
Yesterday, Australian miner T. Forrest announced in the World Economic Forum in Davos that he will be initiating to turn lignite into Diesel in Pakistan. This is extremely significant if this will reduce pollution which is extremely high when burning lignite/brown coal. I had thought 'they' had given up on turning brown coal into diesel. Research was stopped at one point some years ago.

Environmentalists and others had hoped that the heavily polluting Hazelwood Power Station in Victoria could be closed down through the carbon tax, carbon trading (or something), but this has not happened, because of costs, jobs, and of course the financial loss of the nearby brown coal mining operations. If there now exists a process that the mining can continue and the power can be generated through diesel, that is a game changer for Australia, and the rest of the world. 121.209.53.9 (talk) 02:55, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Seam thickness conundrum
"The coal seams are up to 100 metres thick, with multiple coal seams often giving virtually continuous brown coal thickness of up to 230 metres."

So...are they up to 100 m thick or up to 230 m thick? - 68.2.235.85 (talk) 04:08, 8 December 2015 (UTC)


 * 100 m. The "multiple coal seams often giving virtually continuous..." is the clue. Vsmith (talk) 12:28, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Lignite always contains sulfur
(=> it is necessary to filter the exhaust gases of coal power stations fueled by lignite) ... but the word 'sulfur' is'nt mentioned in the article. Can some native speaker write sth. about that in the article ? thanks in advance, --Neun-x (talk) 19:17, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Unclear about moisture content?
I am a bit confused about the numbers … currently the article says that lignite has "carbon content around 60–70 percent, a high inherent moisture content sometimes as high as 75 percent", which on the face of it doesn't seem to add up. Perhaps it should be clearer? My understanding is that brown coal can indeed contain a very large amount of water when its first dug out of the ground, but this rapidly reduces as it dries. I believe the carbon content mentioned above is as a percentage of solids, ie. excluding the water. Is that correct? Logicman1966 (talk) 16:39, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The article is more careful now to distinguish various bases for computing composition, and points out that 60-70% carbon is a dry basis while the as-received basis is just 25-35%. Does that help? --Kent G. Budge (talk) 14:36, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Is lignite really, always equal to brown coal, everywhere?
I don't think lignite is totally equal to brown coal, as the article claims. I think brown coal, i.e. coal with frequently identifiable plant imprints and sometimes partly carbonized parts in it, can be deep-shaft mined in some places, just like black coal or anthracite. On the other hand, lignite is always surface mined (industrially strip-mined or ad-hoc open pit mined) and it doesn't have the "rocky" consistency expected of real coal.

The lowest-grade lignite is sometimes called "burning slate" in Eastern Europe, especially if it has less than 4000kcal/kg thermal value, thus unable to meat the legal definition for coal. That burning slate usually looks like a wafer of alternating, very thin layers of lignite and inorganic content.

Addendum: the hungarian language Wikipedia claims the legal difference between "brown hard coal" and lignite is the amount of humidity in them: if the water content is less than 40% straight out of the mine, the it is a brown coal and if it higher than 40% than it is officially classified as lignite. (Note that Hungary uses a lot of lignite, both for central generating electric powerplants with associated massive strip mines and for domestic heating, sourced from "mom-and-pop" open pit mines, the latter being highly controversial due to causing poor air quality in villages throught the cold season. Hungary also used to have deep-shaft tech brown hard coal mines until the late 1990s.) 80.99.11.157 (talk) 16:28, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Briquettes for home heating
I was able to source the use of lignite briquettes for home heating (not that there seems much doubt, with the bazillions of vendors hawking the stuff on the Internet), but I can't dredge up anything on their historical use or their smell. It sounds right, but I worry that we're confounding lignite briquettes with peat as a fuel source. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 04:20, 6 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The German Wikipedia article on de:Klütten says as much Hobbitschuster (talk) 07:32, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
 * All right I'll look at its references. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 14:34, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Mining lignite and the aftermath
The article needs a detailed section on how lignite is mined, and particularly what is done to repair the landscape after mining is exhausted or finishes, e.g. RWE promote the reforestation of such land (see Garzweiler et al mines). -- User:82.40.43.135
 * I've added three paragraphs outlining the extraction process in the U.S. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 01:05, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The Central German Lake District and the Lusatian Lake District are high profile results of lignite mining related land rehabilitation. Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:44, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Confusion over varying basis for describing lignite
The distinction between the different bases for describing lignite coal seems to still be causing confusion. The article quotes at least three different bases: as-received, which includes moisture and mineral content; dry ash-free, which excludes both; and moist mineral-matter-free which (I gather) includes moisture but not mineral content. For lignite, which is typically high in both moisture and ash, this means wildly discrepant numbers for carbon content and heat content between the bases. I tried adding some clarification when I was working this article a few months back, but perhaps more is needed. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 22:49, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

heat content
Is ‘heat content’ right? 82.2.124.30 (talk) 22:55, 4 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't think so, so I changed it to the equally readable and more accurate heat of combustion Robert Merkel (talk) 01:18, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * In the coal industry, especially in the U.S., heat content is the preferred term. See, for example, the Energy Information Agency website. It is not precisely the same as heat of combusion. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 02:13, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. It feels very sloppy, but if it's the standard usage in the industry I agree it's best to go with that.  Thanks. --Robert Merkel (talk) 06:50, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I understand the dislike for the terminology, particularly as "gross heat content" is, so far as I can tell, almost indistinguishable from heat of combustion, but "net heat content" is not, and sources are not always clear which is being used. Furthermore, it turns out my geological dictionary defines "heat content" as enthalpy, so there is even further ambiguity. I almost wonder if a very short article, say, Heat content (coal) is in order, to link to from coal articles ("heat content" is going to come up with other ranks of coal and in the Coal article itself.)
 * Or we could go with heat of combustion here after all, with a brief explanation somewhere in the article that the industry prefers the term "heat content". But on the other hand the context (low "heat content" of lignite) suggests that it's actually net heat content that is relevant, which is not a synonym for heat of combustion -- it includes reduction in useful energy delivery due to vaporizing the high moisture content of the lignite.
 * Reality is, alas, often messy. Welcome input from other editors. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of a small article explaining "heat content" for coal, and would be happy to help. --Robert Merkel (talk) 03:29, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Got a Draft:Heat content (fuel) up. What I haven't found yet is any kind of reliable source on how this is related to heat of combusion -- so far as I can tell, gross heat content is nearly the same thing, but without sourcing to back that up, it's WP:OR on my part. Feel free to add or modify. We can also change the name if we can think of a better one -- apparently, though, it's not just applied to coal. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 17:24, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

In Agriculture
This section states that lignite is environmentally beneficial and even benign when used for soil conditioning. The references cited only reference the benefit to the soil and agriculture and do not include the environmental effects of lignite mining and transport.

Is the section therefore accurate, when the whole cycle of lignite use in agriculture, including mining, processing and transport, are taken into consideration?Lkingscott (talk) 09:32, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I recommend editing out the purported environmental benefits if not supported by sources; may be WP:OR. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 22:20, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Carbon content
Conflicting information. At the top of the article, the carbon content is specified as 25-35%, but further down it's 60-70%. Why such a discrepancy? Wu5ET (talk) 17:59, 20 February 2023 (UTC)