You mentioned the right environment that is needed to produce coal, but how loong does it actually take to have coal produced?

-- Mike Porter (mikeporter25@hotmail.com), March 05, 2001

Answers

I got my information form the following web-sites (WWW.Minerals.org.au/pages3-35.asp) (.isr.gov.au/resource/index.html) and (Minerals council of Australia-mineral fact sheets) Coal originally formed from ANCIENT plants that died, decomposed and were buried under layers of sediments. As more and more layers of sediments formed over the decomposed plants material the overburden exerted increasing heat and weight on the organic matter. Over MILLIONS of years of these physical conditions cause coal to form from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and mineral compounds in the plant matter. Plant matter changes into coal in stages.Australian Brown caol in its 3rd stage is about 15 million to 50 million year old Brown coal is lower in carbons content then black coal. It is also higher in moister content. This would mean that brown coal is younger than the black coal or has not been exposed to the pressures and heat as long.

-- Cindy Crane (Weare2nuts@aol.com), March 06, 2001.