Discovery and Mining of Coal
In ancient China coal was called stone charcoal, black wood, black gold, and flammable stone. The earliest record of coal was found in the ancient geographical work Shah Hal ring (Classic of
Mountains and Seas). Ancient Chinese began using coal as an energy source quite early, and in the Han Dynasty there was a coal mining industry. Coal ashes and briquettes were unearthed in ruins of residential housing in Fushun in Northeast China and in sites of ancient iron-making workshops in central China. The findings prove that coal was then widely used in daily life and production.
Another geographical work of ancient China, Shui jing Zhu (Notes on Waterways Classic), had a narration of the Bingjingtai Coal Mine, built by noted statesman Cao Cao in AD 210 in Yexian County (in the west of today's Linzhang County of Henan Province). The mine was 50 meters underground, with an output of several thousand tons. In the Song Dynasty, coal mining had a boom, and several large coal mines were discovered. The Song government set up a special institution to take charge of coal mining, and monopolized the trading of coal. A Song writer writes that in the Song capital Bianliang "several million people use coal as fuel, and none of them burns firewood." In recent years archaeologists excavated a site of ancient coal mine in Hebi of Henan Province, and found that the mine was of quite a high technical level with fairly complete facilities. The mine had two shafts with a diameter of 2.5 meters, and their depth was about 50 meters. There were two tunnels of about 500 meters, with a height of 2 meters and width of 2.1 meters. The coal cutting work face was 1.4 meters wide at the top and 1 meter at the bottom.
Although a bit narrow, it was enough to cope with the needs of coal mining. When the mining of coal was completed, the miners would retreat grid by grid in a leaping manner. The mine also had fairly satisfactory facilities and techniques for ventilation, lighting, shoring, step-by-step lifting, and drainage. According to a narration in Song Yingxing's Exploitation of the Works of Nature, people had devised a method to deal with gas, the top risk in coal mining. Before cutting coal, the miners would push a big bamboo, which was hollowed inside and cut sharp at one end, into the coal layer to let out the gas.
Venetian traveler Marco Polo (c.1254-1324) mentioned with curiosity in his travel account that the Chinese burned a kind of "black stone," which burned as easily as wood but had much stronger flame, and the fire would last till the next day. This narration meant that at that time Westerners had no idea about coal, yet by then the Chinese had used coal for a thousand years. In addition, Westerners did not know how to have lighting in coal mines, and for a long period they cut coal in the dark. They had not solved the problem of coal mine drainage till the 17th century and the issues of gas and ventilation till the 18m century. As an author wrote, in European coal mines a spark would turn the mine into a giant cannon tube, the heat waves would rage through every tunnel and gush out of the shaft with fragments of rock. |
