Self-Heating Coal Waste Fire Monitoring and Related Environmental Problems: Case Studies from Poland and Ukraine

Abstract

The self-heating of coal waste dumps is considered as a serious environmental issue, wherever active or inactive coal mining has been present. This issue is introduced from two active coal mining regions from Poland (Upper Silesian Coal Basin) and Ukraine (Donetsk Coal Basin) based on mineralogy, organic petrography and geochemistry, and remote sensing techniques. Thermally affected coal wastes reveal changes recorded by organic and mineral matter. Irregular cracks and fissures appear within and at the edges of organic matter particles, which are oxidised, devolatilised and plasticised. Mineral phases underwent oxidation, dehydration, structure rebuilding and recrystallisation. Highest temperatures generated during the fire cause melting and paralava formation. During self-heating, some chalcophile elements like Hg (mostly present as HgS), Pb, Zn can be enriched and released, or different organic pollutants like phenols (originated from vitrinite particles), different PAHs with alkyl substitutes, chlorinated PAHs, or sulphur heterocycles are formed. The introduced remote sensing techniques helped to localise and monitor hot spots with different temperature ranges. Applying SWIR bands of Landsat hot spots from extremely burning dumps in Ukraine were successfully localised, however, only night-time scenes with SWIR can be used. The sun’s disturbing effects should be considered as an influential factor for both thermal imaging camera or satellite images. Thermal cameras can reveal the most detailed signs of low to high temperature anomalies with different cracks and line shapes.

Remote detection and monitoring of post-mining heat island

“…Very often, they are thermally active, and spontaneous combustion occurs, causing endogenous fires and raising the temperature in their interior, on the surface, and in fissures locally extending to the surface (Scheme 1). Heap and tailings fires negatively affect the environment and cause emissions of pollutants such as CH 4 , CO, CO 2 , H 2 S, SO 2 , NH 3 , aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), or containing toxic metals (Ba, Cr, Cd, Hg, Pb, and Z) (Carras et al, 2009;Ribeiro et al, 2010;Elsevier et al, 2012;Kuna-Gwoździewicz, 2013;Melody and Johnston, 2015;Liang et al, 2016;Stankevich et al, 2016;Gawor, 2017;Fabiańska et al, 2019;Nádudvari et al, 2020;Swolkień, 2020;Abramowicz et al, 2021a;Nádudvari et al, 2021a;Abramowicz et al, 2021b;Nádudvari et al, 2021b;Smoliński et al, 2021;Górka et al, 2022;Nádudvari et al, 2022;Rykała et al, 2022;Dąbrowska et al, 2023).…”

“…Several investigations of coal waste heaps and tailings ponds with high temperatures are described in the literature, carried out by various methods, mainly by direct methods. Fire can be identified by examining the presence of emitted gases, for example, by gas chromatography of collected samples (Fabiańska et al, 2018;Nádudvari et al, 2021b;Karacan et al, 2021;Nádudvari et al, 2022;Singh et al, 2022) or by measuring the temperature directly in a heap spot-wise with a pyrometer (Kruszewski et al, 2018;Allen et al, 2019;Protasov et al, 2021), or using thermal imaging cameras and thermal image analysis (Abramowicz and Chybiorz, 2019;Sobocińska and Sobociński, 2019;Nádudvari et al, 2020;Nádudvari et al, 2021a). However, these methods require researchers to be present in a hazardous area.…”

“…However, these methods require researchers to be present in a hazardous area. For this reason, remote sensing methods are increasingly used to identify fires (Huo et al, 2014;Nádudvari, 2014;Fabiańska et al, 2019;Fix et al, 2019;Stracher, 2019;Nádudvari et al, 2020;Wasilewski, 2020;Almeida et al, 2021;Nádudvari et al, 2021a;Ren et al, 2022). Non-contact measurement, low cost, as well as time-saving, and safe implementation of measurements, especially in the case of largescale sites, are unquestionable benefits of remote sensing methods.…”

“…Data for remote sensing studies of heap and tailings ponds high temperatures or fire effects can be obtained by thermal sensors placed on satellites, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), or by thermal handheld cameras (Nádudvari, 2014;Abramowicz and Chybiorz, 2019;Nádudvari et al, 2020;Nádudvari et al, 2021a). Active remote sensing techniques are also used, performing surveys from satellite radar data (Akcin et al, 2007;Jiang et al, 2011;Nádudvari, 2014;Nádudvari et al, 2020;Nádudvari et al, 2021a;Karanam et al, 2021;Yu et al, 2022) or from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data acquired from a UAV airstrike (McKenna et al, 2017;Nguyen et al, 2021;Jońca et al, 2022). With these techniques it is possible to study landslides and land subsidence due to fire.…”

“…Satellites that have a sensor capable of thermal imaging are Landsat 4-5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM+, Landsat 8-9 OLI TIRS, Terra ASTER, Terra MODIS, NOAA-AVHRR, or Sentinel-3 (NASA, 2023a;United States Geological Survey, 2023e;NASA, 2023b;Copernicus, 2023;NOAA, 2023). In studies of the temperature of coal mining tailings ponds and heaps, thermal data are primarily from Landsat or ASTER systems (Chatterjee, 2006;Martha et al, 2010;Nádudvari, 2014;Huo et al, 2015;Mishra et al, 2020;Nádudvari et al, 2020;Nádudvari et al, 2021a;Wang et al, 2022). Thermal channels of satellites such as NOAA-AVHRR, Terra MODIS, and Sentinel-3 have a spatial resolution of 1 km.…”