9781422285534

30 Coal

Finally the prepared coal is taken, usually by conveyor, to bins, silos, or hill-sized stockpiles. It may also be loaded straight into trucks, trains, barges, or bulk carrier cargo ships. Coal, being fairly heavy solid lumps, is costly to transport, especially so compared to petroleum oil and natural gas, which flow along pipelines. Power Generation More than nine-tenths of coal use in North America is to generate electricity in power plants. The coal burns in enormous furnaces. It heats water in a boiler into steam at

About 90 percent of America’s coal is used to power electrical plants.