Technical Analysis of Coal Utilization and Environmental Pollution

Coal is known as black gold, the food of industry. It has been used as one of the main energies for human being since the 18th century. Although its important place has been taken by petroleum nowadays, due to the daily drying up of petroleum for quite a period of time in the future, the large quantity of coal reserves and with the rapid development of science and technology, especially maturity and wide use of integrated coal gasification technology, coal will become one of the energies that cannot be replaced in human life and production. Coal increased fastest for five successive years. Coal consumption increased by 4.5% in the world which is higher than the average level 3.2% of last ten years. However, the use of coal has brought up serious ecological environment problems. In the 20th century, serious air environmental pollution events, such as acid rain, damage to ozonosphere, global warming, photochemical smog and urban coal smog, are all related to coal burning. The principal source of main pollutants in air, for example, SO2, NOx, CO, fume dust, particles, organic pollutants and heavy metals, are caused by coal burning. These pollutants have caused irreversible damage to human health and ecological environment. Finally this paper describes coal consumption and environmental problems due to coal utilization.