Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.
A coal mine mantrip at Lackawanna Coal Mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania
Coal miners exiting a winder cage at a mine near Richlands, Virginia in 1974
Surface coal mining in Wyoming, U.S.
A coal mine in Frameries, Belgium
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is a type of fossil fuel, formed when dead plant matter decays into peat which is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times.
Bituminous coal, the most common coal grade
Coastal exposure of the Point Aconi Seam in Nova Scotia
Coal miner in Britain, 1942
Coal production of the world in 1908 as presented by The Harmsworth atlas and Gazetter