Earth and Mineral Sciences

EMS Energy Institute acquires Argonne Coal Sample Bank

Gareth Mitchell and Dave Johnson configured Argonne samples. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The Earth and Mineral Sciences Energy Institute recently acquired the Argonne Premium Coal Sample Bank (APC), one of the most extensively used sample banks in the world. Last week, the coals were physically moved to the institute where they will now be housed and available to researchers, which required moving thousands of samples, and large shelving units. This acquisition complements the Penn State Coal Sample Bank and Database already housed at the Institute.

The APC Sample Bank can supply researchers investigating coal structure, properties and behavior with highly uniform coal samples unexposed to oxygen. The sample bank consists of eight coals, including lignite, subbituminous coal, high volatile, medium volatile and low volatile bituminous coal, as well as a liptinite-rich, an inertinite-rich and a coking coal. Coals from the collection have been placed in sealed glass ampoules or 5-gallon carboys and have been stored in carefully controlled conditions.

Representative splits from each coal sample are chemically and physically as identical as possible and will be stable over a long period of time. Because of the sample uniformity and premium quality of APC samples, researchers are assured that the analysis results they generate are comparable with results generated by other workers using APC samples.

Coal samples from the APC Sample Bank are available to all members of the coal research community. The Institute can provide assistance in identifying samples that match specifications or that best suit the research needs of the requestor. Coals from the collection are distributed at a reasonable cost plus shipping and handling in two different mass/particle size quantities, 5g of minus 0.15 mm or 10g of minus 0.85 mm. More information is available on our factsheet. Anyone with questions related to the sample bank can contact Gareth Mitchell at n8h@psu.edu or 814-865-6543.

Last Updated May 28, 2013