Footage of Coke Ovens in the Early Am of Sunday 08-29-2010 near Vansant Virginia, Deep in the heart of Appalachia and about 1.5 hours west of Bluefield West Virginia on Rt. 460. Here is a description of Coke From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Raw cokeCoke is the solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal. Cokes from coal are grey, hard, and porous.
"Coke oven at smokeless fuel plant, South WalesCoke is usually produced from coal; the process is called coking.
Volatile constituents of the coal—including water, coal-gas, and coal-tar—are driven off by baking in an airless furnace or oven at temperatures as high as 2,000 degrees Celsius. This fuses together the fixed carbon and residual ash. Most modern facilities have "by-product" coking ovens. Today, the volatile hydrocarbons are mainly used, after purification, in a separate combustion process to generate energy. Non by-product coking furnaces or coke furnaces (ovens) burn the hydrocarbon gases produced by the coke-making process to drive the carbonization process.
Bituminous coal must meet a set of criteria for use as coking coal, determined by particular coal assay techniques. These include moisture content, ash content, sulfur content, volatile content, tar, and plasticity.
The greater the volatile matter in coal, the more by-product can be produced, but too low or too high a level of volatile matter in the coal results in inferior coke produced in respect to coke quality properties. It is generally considered that levels of 26-29 % of volatile matter in the coal blend is good for coking purposes. Thus different types of coal are proportionally blended to reach acceptable levels of volatility before the coking process begins.
Uses
Coke is used as a fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace.
Since smoke-producing constituents are driven off during the coking of coal, coke forms a desirable fuel for stoves and furnaces in which conditions are not suitable for the complete burning of bituminous coal itself. Coke may be burned with little or no smoke under combustion conditions, while bituminous coal would produce much smoke.
Discovered by accident to have superior heat shielding properties when combined with other materials, coke was one of the materials used in the heat shielding on NASA's Apollo program space vehicles. In its final form, this material was called AVCOAT 5026-39. This material has been used most recently as the heat shielding on the Mars Pathfinder vehicle. Although not used for modern day space shuttles, NASA had been planning to utilize coke and other materials for the heat shield for its next generation space craft, named Orion, before that project's cancellation.[citation needed]
Coke may be used to make synthesis gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
Syngas; Water gas: a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, made by passing steam over red-hot coke (or any carbon based char)
Producer gas; wood gas; generator gas; synthetic gas; suction gas: a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and nitrogen, made by passing air over red-hot coke (or any carbon based char)
History...
Historic coke burning.The Chinese first used coke for heating and cooking no later than the ninth century AD. By the first decades of the eleventh century, Chinese ironworkers in the Yellow River valley began to fuel their furnaces with coke, solving their fuel problem in that tree-sparse region.[1]
In 1603, Sir Henry Platt suggested that coal might be charred in a manner analogous to the way charcoal is produced from wood. This process was not put into practice until 1642, when coke was used for roasting malt in Derbyshire. Coal cannot be used in brewing because its sulfurous fumes would impart a foul taste to the beer. In 1709, Abraham Darby I established a coke-fired blast furnace to produce cast iron. Coke's superior crushing strength allowed blast furnaces to become taller and larger. The ensuing availability of inexpensive iron was one of the factors leading to the Industrial Revolution.
In England in the first years of steam railway locomotives, coke was the normal fuel. This resulted from an early piece of environmental legislation; any proposed locomotive had to "consume its own smoke".[2] This was not technically possible to achieve until the firebox arch came into use, but burning coke, with its low smoke emissions, was considered to meet the requirement. However, this rule was quietly dropped and cheaper coal became the normal fuel, as railways gained acceptance among the general public.
Loading...
6:14
Falling of the Coke Plant Boiler House Stackby lifeofanomad1,078 views
Link to this comment:
All Comments (1)