COAL and MINERAL USE Communications Mining makes possible a wide range of necessary products that sustain our way of life. The products of mining are essential, not only to meet basic needs, but also for higher aspirations — a continuously improving standard of living, cleaner environment, and societal prosperity, security and stability. Here are just a few of the many ways coal and minerals benefit people every day.
Agriculture Minerals are needed for our most basic requirement for life — food. Although most people recognize that magnesium, iron and zinc are important for healthy diets, they don’t often connect minerals with productive farming. Fertilizers made from potash, phosphate rock and sulfur are essential to grow crops. Harvesting and transporting crops to market is achieved by machinery and transportation vehicles made from minerals. Processing food takes still more machinery and equipment, as does packaging.
Construction and Housing Minerals are society’s building blocks. Rocks and minerals are present in nearly every building and structure — skyscrapers, hospitals, bridges, factories, fast food restaurants and the house in which you live. Minerals are commonly used in gypsum wallboard; aluminum or galvanized steel gutters; copper or stainless steel pipes; copper wiring; concrete foundations; asphalt roof shingles; and windows made from glass (trona, silica, sand and feldspar).
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The revolution in consumer technologies for communications and data have led to exciting new applications for minerals. Copper wiring, ceramic insulators, steel printing presses, gold connectors and silicon chips – all forms of communication, from newspapers to smart phones to satellites - require mineral components. A computer typically requires as many as 66 minerals, including silicon, boron, lead, indium, strontium, barium and phosphorous for the screen; calcium carbonate, talc, clays, sulfur and mica for the case; silicon for the chips; gold, copper, aluminium, steel, lithium, tungsten, chromium, titanium, silver, cobalt, nickel, germanium, tin, lead, tantalum and zinc for the circuitry; and cadmium and lithium for the battery.
Energy Coal accounts for about a quarter of the nation’s electricity generation. Over the past four decades, as the U.S. economy has become increasingly dependent on electricity to meet energy demand. At the same time, air quality has improved with declines in coal power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), coal-based power plants are expected to remain a key source of electricity. Meanwhile, another product of mining, uranium, provides an additional 19 percent of electricity generation through nuclear power plants. Combined, coal and nuclear plants are responsible for nearly 50 percent of the nation’s electricity. Liquid fuels also can be produced from coal. The production of coal-to-liquid (CTL) transportation fuels begins with coal as a raw material or feedstock. The indirect liquefaction process is proven and already being used in other parts of the world and can be an alternative to U.S. imported oil.
