Petrography of Feed Coals in the Soma Power Plant, Manisa, Turkey

The coal-bearing Soma basin is one of the most productive lacustrine coal basins of western Anatolia-Turkey. This study mainly focuses on petrography of the feed coals (FCs) in the Soma power plant. A total of 16 feed coal samples were systematically collected once a week over an eight-week period from both group boiler units, B1–4 with 660 MW and B5–6 with 330 MW capacity. The most abundant maceral group of FCs is huminite, in which texto-ulminite, eu-ulminite, attrinite, densinite are rich. Liptinite group macerals in FCs include mainly sporinite, resinite, and liptodetrinite, which are considerably higher than the other identified liptinite macerals. In the inertinite group, fusinite and inertodetrinite are more abundant. Identifiable minerals with petrographical studies are pyrite, siderite, other minerals (e.g., carbonates, clay minerals, quartz, feldspar, etc.), and fossil shells. This study shows that FCs used are subbituminous in rank with mean random ulminite reflectance of 0.43%Rr oil from B1–4 units and 0.39%Rr oil from B5–6 units. This indicates that coal rank is slightly higher in the central mines (southern Soma) than in the Denis mines (northern Soma).

Keywords:

• feed coal
• maceral
• power plant
• random reflectance
• Soma
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

This study is part of a research project on “Environmental Implications of Power Plant Feed Coal and Ash Geochemistry” under NATO Collaborative Linkage Grant (EST.CLG.979151) and a TUBITAK project (YDABAG-102Y027). The authors gratefully acknowledge this NATO grant for the financial support and TUBITAK for the project study, Prof. Dr. Jim Hower from CAER-USA for ultimate analysis of feed coals, and Dr. Xavier Querol from CSIC-SPAIN for the SEM-EDX analyses.