Putting out fires

Coal mine fires are estimated to be responsible for as much as one percent of the world’s total CO₂ emissions. CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) can be key to the difficult challenge of extinguishing many of the world’s ravaging coal mine fires. 

Coal is still one of the world’s most important energy sources, not least because it burns well. One of the disadvantages is that coal can begin to burn while it is still in the mine. This leads not only to major local damage: coal mine fires also result in enormous CO₂ emissions – perhaps as much as one percent of the world’s total CO2 emissions. Coal mine fires are astonishingly difficult to extinguish and can burn for many decades.

Perhaps the most famous coal mine fire started in 1962 at Centralia in Pennsylvania, USA, and is still burning over 48 years later. Today, Centralia is a ghost town. At Svalbard in Norway a fire in the Svea coal mine lasted for five months before it was extinguished. The Svalbard fire was extinguished by a large amount of chilled CO₂, amongst other things, which suffocated the oxygen supply to the flames. In the world’s biggest coal-producing country, China, there are over a hundred coal mine fires at any one time (picture). Enormous resources are disappearing for nothing. Even worse is the local pollution this creates, as well as the large CO₂ emissions. With the commercialization of CCS, it is possible that more coal mine fires can be extinguished using chilled CO₂ from the chimneys of factories and power plants.