DEVELOPMENT OF A CONDITIONAL SIMULATION MODEL OF A COAL DEPOSIT

Abstract

One of the important factors in developing an emission control strategy for a coal fired steam generator is the characterization of the insitu variability of the coal being used in the furnace. Development of a model to correctly capture the insitu variability of the coal is thus fundamental to the analyses of emission control strategies. A simulation model of a portion of the Upper Freeport coal seam in Western Pennsylvania was developed using the recently developed technique called conditional simulation. This model was constructed so that it has the same mean, variance, and distribution of values as the real deposit, and most importantly, has the same spatial correlations as the real deposit. Validation of the model confirmed that the statistical characteristics of the model closely matched the characteristics of the real deposit. A second validation of the model showed that when the model is "mined" according to an actual daily mining sequence, the resulting daily variability corresponded extremely well to what was observed during the actual mining. This second verification served not only to validate the model but also served as a practical demonstration that the model can be successfully used to predict day by day variation in the quality of run of mine coal. One potential use of conditional simulation to "test" how well a mine plan works in actual mining was illustrated by an example where four mine plans were tested on their ability to correctly estimate coal production and sulfur content on a yearly basis. In each case, the simulated deposit was mined out according to the mine plan. The resulting comparison of "actual" production and estimated production clearly shows the adequacy or inadequacy of each one.