Page 42 - New Trends In Coal Conversion

10 New Trends in Coal Conversion

Middle-East Middle-East 1.48
South America 119
South America Africa 264
CIS 506
Africa Pacific 512
Europe 640
Regions Pacific Asia 4,500
CIS
745
North America
Europe

North America
Asia
0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000
Million tonnes
Figure 1.7 Coal production (including all ranks of coal) by regions in 2016.
Data from Enerdata, 2017. Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2017. https://yearbook.enerdata.
net/coal-lignite/coal-world-consumption-data.html.

Korea, and a set of countries that imported only relatively small amounts (below
100 Mt of coal). Other countries such as Australia, Indonesia, Russia, Colombia, South
Africa, and the United States were clearly coal exporting countries (Enerdata, 2017).
The global consumption of coal increased in parallel with its production up to 2013
when both consumption and production reached their maximum levels. This was a
consequence of the increase in coal consumption by countries of the Asia region. Dur-
ing the same period of time and with slight variations, there was a decrease in the con-
sumption of coal for countries in Europe, CIS, and North America. Since 2013, the
trend in world coal consumption as a whole has also experienced a slight decrease
(Enerdata, 2017). In fact, the year 2016 saw the third consecutive drop ( 3.2%) in
coal consumption (Enerdata, 2017). Fig. 1.8 shows the total coal consumption all
over the world during 2016. Again China was the country responsible for half of
the world coal demand, and it was by far the largest coal consumer with 3546 Mt of
coal consumed although it is clearly reducing its level of consumption compared
with previous years (Enerdata, 2017). Other significant coal consumers in the same
year were India, the United States, Germany, and Russia, who consumed between
950 and 210 Mt of coal. Coal consumption in other countries was well below these
amounts (Fig. 1.8).

1.5 Coal quality

The physicochemical, and consequently technological, properties of a given coal are
related to three independent geological parameters. Each parameter is in turn deter-
mined by some aspect of the origin of the coal. Explained more fully by Ward