Firefighting foam heats up coal fire debate (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Firefighting foam heats up coal fire debate (2010)

earthmagazine.org

69 pointscjg51 comments

"Coal fires are a problem all over the world. Such fires endanger nearby communities, waste precious resources and produce tons of noxious and greenhouse gases. Centralia is not the only coal fire burning in the United States. In fact, it’s just one of 38 burning in Pennsylvania alone. The hundreds of underground fires in the United States, from Pennsylvania to Alabama to Wyoming, combined with the thousands thought to be burning in China, India and elsewhere, are one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide and pollution on Earth."

What really?

Wikipedia claims they account for 3% of CO2 emissions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire (at the end of the intro paragraphs)

Considering that they're a pure nuisance with no economic value and plenty of danger due to area denial, and 3% is nothing to sneeze at, that would suggest that they should be a priority to greenhouse gas reduction.

Like with everything else, the question is always the same - who pays for it?

One can compare such permanent fires with a dragon that lives near a village and eats people from time to time. And every time, it takes a reward from a village chief to find a hero and kill the dragon.

Why doesn't any of the states with coal fires offer a monetary prize to stop such fires? Put money on the table, and a hero (in a form of a robotic firefighting startup) will come.

It cannot be fixed with robots. Thousands of R2D2s running into mines with fire extinguishers wouldn't make a dent. These are fires spread throughout many square-miles, cubic-miles, of permeable rock. Quenching them must involve external containment. Massive concrete domes/walls surrounding the burning material. Then you must wait many many years for temperatures to cool. It is a multi-decade project imho.

The best time to start such a project would have been decades ago. The second best time is today.

It could be a good jobs program and perhaps the concrete barriers could be built as functional structures for the local community?

We can't even get government funding for less CO2-heavy power plants, let alone putting out fires that don't directly harm anyone with an unknown success rate.

Let's not overfocus on the word robot in my statement, as it was not the point I was making.

This article is from 2010 - any update in the last 8 years?

Here's his facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/541222132634503/

The company website is down, but he's posting. I suspect he's still trying but his company no longer is.

Most recent I can find: https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years...

Kind of a bum article but no progress as far as I can tell.

Recent court case re gov't attempt to kick last citizens out. They got a settlement and are allowed to stay until they die at which time gov't will take land via eminent domain. https://wnep.com/2013/10/30/agreement-reached-with-remaing-c...

I've read about this fire before and on the surface it seems crazy to think we have all of these underground fires happening that no one really thinks or cares about. I understand how we got to where we are but it still makes me stop in amazement that this is a thing that is actively happening.

It's actually already taken care of. Basically, most of them are beyond what the current technology can achieve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire

This is a good read. So the one mentioned in OP may work for some but it may be only useful for very limited set of these fires. We know too little about things under the surface. I'd say we have zero chance to conquer them until we can have a deep earth CT (just like CT of your brain).

60M for a technology which would be the future, yes. 60M for something only works for a few limited cases, probably not.

How far along are we with ground penetrating radar?

I’d imagine if they struggle to find tunnels dug under borders of high tech countries that they will probably struggle with these.

You could look via seismographs and small explosions, as is done for some kinds of resource exploration.

Plain old drilling is pretty effective though.

"It's actually already taken care of."

It is? A big coal fire that burned on a area of 80ha last time they checked in 1983 estimated to burn up to an area of 1500 ha is only priority number 2 to the agency. So to me the problem seems far from being taken care of.

"The last detailed study of the fire was in 1983 ... GAI found that the fire was spread over almost 80 hectares, and estimated it could eventually burn close to 1,500 hectares. "

I have one quibble.

> Using water can cause steam explosions.

It's actually worse than that.

2(C) + O2 + H2O → CO + CO2 + H2

So you have a H2/CO explosion. That's what happened at Chernobyl. Very hot graphite moderator, plus cooling water.

Edit: lose extra O

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_gas

To be fair, some other things also happened at Chernobyl.

True. But wasn't it the hydrogen explosion that popped the containment? Not that there was all that much containment, in any case.

For an exhaustive account of the fire: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Underground-Ongoing-Tragedy-Cent... For a similar fire that was eventually contained: https://www.amazon.com/West-Carbondale-Pennsylvania-Heritage...

Both are very interesting reading if you find these as fascinating as I do.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fire-in-the-ho...

I heard about the phenomenon before, but was stumped how long they can burn.

>Many ancient fires like those still burn, from the Canadian Arctic to southeast Australia. Scientists estimate that Australia’s BurningMountain, the oldest known coal fire, has burned for 6,000 years. In the 19th century, explorers mistook the smoking summit for a volcano.

How much is a fire like this contributing to CO2 emissions? Seems like 60 million is a small price to pay if it stops ongoing burning and combustion products.

I don't think that's how it works. Coal is fungible, and is not in short supply. Putting out the fire would not increase the amount of coal being used industrially, nor would it decrease the cost of coal. It would just eliminate one of many sources of CO2. So a net win in global warming terms.

Parent comment is saying as much. $60mm to put out this fire is worth it in order to eliminate a CO2 source.

Either I'm not reading what you wrote correctly, or you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

I'm saying put it out. Less CO2 released.

I've tried running the numbers, but actually finding numbers is hard here.

If I'm understanding the sources correctly, the coal seam on fire in Centralia is about 3700 acres in total size, and coal seams seem to be only a few feet thick generally. Plugging in 8 feet for a thickness (which I think includes a large amount of non-coal rock, but I don't know the recoverable fraction so I'll estimate 100% of it to be coal), I get that the total CO2 production of burning all of it would be about 7 million metric tonnes of CO2. That would be for the entire lifetime of the fire.

So one coal seam fire would produce about 0.2% of the US's yearly CO2 emissions. Keeping in mind that these fires last for decades, that would suggest that coal seem fires account for less than 1% and probably less than 0.1% of CO2 emissions.

Large smoldering fires contribute roughly 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions according to Dr. Guillermo Rein.

http://guillermo-rein.blogspot.com/2016/06/erc-haze-reducing...

I had no idea that there were so many underground coal fires. So this is comparable to the methane leakage issue, I think.

Note that he is not referring to coal seam fires. He's referring to Southeast Asian peat fires, a substantial portion of which are started to clear way for palm oil plantations and other agricultural purposes.

Can’t they just enclose it so it uses up all the oxygen? Or detonate charges?

if you knew all of the entrances and didn't have to worry about permeation, sure. But who really knows how many possible places air is entering that fire.

There are uncharted mine shafts, some where homes used to be because people would mine under their basements. There are also sinkholes which you can see in pictures of the highway.

Can’t you map those by seeing where air is still flowing in? Release some dust and map its flow. Or better yet just cover the surface with foam.

Its not just mineshafts where it burns, it burns directly underground where it has never been mined before due to permeable rock.

Can we not just start a gofundme campaign for this and bypass the government funding decisions?

We can.

Could this actually be a profitable business, selling carbon offsets?

Its coal fire day on Hacker News! (there was another post about a possible coal fire on the Titanic)

That’s not a conicidence

I think it's safe to say that that one has been extinguished!

This one will sort itself out. Once sea levels rise high enough, the mine will be submerged and the fire will go out.

Sea level rise if all ice melts: 230 ft.

Sea level rise to historical maximum: 660 ft. (100m years ago; the difference is largely because of thermal expansion of water and changing shape of ocean basins.)

Elevation of Centralia, PA: 1467 ft.

Ok fine, I guess we have to do something about this.

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

"We got ourselves a pretty big fire. Gonna need a huge bang."

https://youtu.be/U8Vh3h9i2Uk?t=37

World ocean area is 361 million km2. We need 1467 feet or 447 meters of sea level rise, right? So a total of 1.6e20 liters or 161 million km3. The volume of the Moon is 21 billion km3, so too big. Rhea is about 233 million km3 (I think) so that would be more reasonable.

Rhea is only 1.272 billion km from Earth, totally doable I think. Anyone else want to go grab a rocket and put out a coal fire? I feel like it'd be eminently doable with some kind of Project Orion-style tactical blasts behind Rhea.

I see absolutely no way this could go wrong.

Really crazy how untold billions are spent on climate change mitigation and they can’t raise the 60m to put out this fire.

Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. They lead to the local equivalent of coal fires.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry I actually meant it is tragic that this cannot be funded given that it is such a high climate change priority according to the article. The mitigation would be fairly cheap and long lasting, it might burn another 50 years

The thing is, many things have been tried, nothing has been particularly effective.

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