Correlations Between Petrographical Properties, Chemical Structure, and Technological Behavior of Rhenish Brown Coal

The brown coal reserves in the Federal Republic of Germany amount to approx. 56 billion metric tons, 55 billion metric tons of which are in the Rhenish brown coal district located west of Cologne. About 35 billion metric tons of that reserve are considered to be technologically and economically mineable today (1). Rhenish brown coal is now mined in five opencast mines with an average depth of about 280 m. Modern mining equipment having a daily capacity of some 240,000 m3 is used. About 119 million metric tons of brown coal were mined in 1981. Of that output, 84.5 % was used for power generation, 7.9 % for briquette production in 4 briquetting plants of the Rheinische Braunkohlenwerke and 4.2 % for powdered brown coal production in two grinding mills. A low portion, viz. 0.3 %, was used in a Salem-Lurgi rotary hearth furnace to produce about 96,000 metric tons