Thanks to the efforts of Bill Newman, and the courtesy of the Drummond
Company, a group of 15 members of the Birmingham Paleontology Society
were able to visit the Shoal Creek Mine, a working underground coal
mine on Saturday, April 24.
The
Shoal Creek Mine is a modern, high-tech coal mine, having begun
operation only 5 years ago. Following an introductory safety
presentation (mandatory for visitors to the underground workings of the
mine), and a fitting of personal safety paraphernalia (hardhat with
light, steel-toed rubber boots, and an emergency "self-rescue unit" to
remove carbon monoxide from the air in case of fire), we descended
about 1900 feet below the surface in a speedy elevator. Once there, we
were ushered into several Humvees, the standard mode of motorized
travel through the mine's vast network of tunnels. We then drove
several miles to see one of the areas being actively mined.
In
the Shoal creek mine, coal occurs in two narrow nearly horizontal
seams, named the Mary Lee and Blue Creek seams. The rock just above and
below the seams is a sandy shale bearing plant fossils, as we
discovered at one stop in the underground tour. Two types of mining
techniques are used in the mine, continuous mining and longwall mining.
Continuous mining machines tunnel directly into the rock, and have been
used to form a network of tunnels. In the longwall operation we
witnessed, a line of automated shields support the mine ceiling just
next to a long (typically a thousand feet) rock face, while a drum
shearing machine moves slowly along the length of the wall,
continuously gouging about 39" of rockface off and dumping it onto a
continuously running chain conveyor belt. The belt delivers the mixture
of rock and coal to a continuous rock crusher, and the chain conveyor
then connects with a series of conveyors, the last of which carries the
coal and rock to the surface along an exit tunnel sloping up to the
surface at a 17 degree angle. At the surface, a series of operations
separates rock from coal, and sorts coal into sizes appropriate for
different uses. The principal customer for the coal from the Shoal
Creek mine is Alabama Power Co.
Many of us were quite impressed
with the efficiency of the operation and the thorough measures in place
to ensure the safety and comfort of the miners. The mine visit was an
outstanding educational experience. In fact, it was also a lot of fun.
Our thanks to the Drummond Company, the courteous and helpful mine
management and miners, and to Bill Newman, who made the arrangements
for the tour on behalf of BPS.