A coal breaker was a coal processing plant which broke coal into various useful sizes. Coal breakers also removed impurities from the coal (typically slate) and deposited them into a culm dump. The coal breaker is a forerunner of the modern coal preparation plant.
Generally speaking, a coal tipple was typically used at a bituminous coal mine, where removing impurities was important but sorting by size was only a secondary, minor concern. Coal breakers were always used (with or without a tipple) at anthracite mines. While tipples were used around the world, coal breakers were used primarily in the United States in the state of Pennsylvania (where, between 1800 and the mid-20th century, nearly all the world's known anthracite reserves were located). At least one source claims that, in 1873, coal breaking plants were found only at anthracite mines in Pennsylvania.
Read more about Coal Breaker: Function of A Coal Breaker, Pre-breaker Treatment of Coal, History of Coal Breakers and Their Technology, The Coal Breaking Process
Famous quotes containing the word coal:
“In those days, the blag slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the side of our hill. Not enough to mar the countryside nor blacken the beauty of our village. For the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers between the green.”
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