Determination of quartz content for Indian coals using an FTIR technique

A suite of thirteen Indian thermal coals have been subjected to FTIR examination to determine their quartz content. The coal samples were ashed at 815±10 °C using standard procedures and the high temperature ash (HTA) of each coal was used to make a tablet with KBr under pressure. Each tablet was then subjected to FTIR scanning to obtain a spectrum at a resolution of 2 cm−1. The 800 cm−1 quartz doublet observed in each spectrum was used to obtain quantitative information on the percentage of quartz present. The data were compared with interpretations from ash analysis. The result showed a good correlation between the two sets of data (R2=0.84), suggesting the potential of the method for routine testing of quartz content of coal in laboratory, especially as it takes less time than other methods

Determination of quartz and its abundance in respirable airborne dust in both coal and metal mines in India

The WHO/ILO international program (1995) on the global elimination of silicosis, aiming inter alia at characterization of dust and its sources, monitoring and evaluation of the results for health risk, has put a premium on the determination of quartz in respirable air borne dust, which is known to cause irreversible lung diseases, such as silicosis and cancer. The work presented herein is a study of the quartz content in airborne respirable dust (ARD) generated in coal and metal mines (zinc and manganese) with a view to evaluate the health risk of miners as per mines regulations. Implementation of safety measures to reduce/eliminate risk to contract silicosis in any mine requires monitoring of the emission of quartz in various locations in addition to the ARD concentration for computation of Maximum Exposure Limit (MEL). The direct on-filter method using an FTIR spectrometer has been adopted for the determination of quartz in ARD. Personal air samplers were used to collect ARD from different locations in mines on GLA-5000 PVC membrane filters. The air samplers were either attached with different workers engaged in the shift or placed in a position near to the dust generation source in the mines to collect suitable amount of dust for analysis. Each dust-loaded filter was then directly scanned by the spectrometer to give the spectrum of quartz, from which the proportion of quartz in the dust was determined from an estimation of the intensity of the doublet at 800 cm-1 using standard procedure. It has been found that the percentage of quartz in ARD of coal mines, especially in coking coal mines situated in Jharia coalfield, is less than 1% in almost all the workings, barring a few cases where it has exceeded this value. MEL for workers is, therefore, equal to 3 mg/m3 in almost all the working places sampled in coal mines. In contrast, for metal mines the situation is different. Quartz determined in ARD exceeds 5% in many workings. Further, the percentage of quartz is also found to vary from location to location inside the mine, which is a reflection of the compositional variation of the rock strata in different working zones of the mines. Monitoring of the emission of quartz is essential for identifying potentially dangerous silicosis-prone areas and working out strategies to mitigate health-related problems of the miners. It has been found that wet drilling and good ventilation systems help to effectively control dust problems at some locations, whereas rotation of workers may be needed in some places where it is difficult to suppress dust to a safe level

Radiolytic desulphurization of high-sulphur coals

Gamma-ray-induced radiolysis of aqueous or acidic aqueous coal slurries is an effective method of desulphurization of some high-sulphur (2-8 wt%) Indian coals; not only the inorganic and organic sulphur but also the mineral matter are oxidatively removed without seemingly affecting the coal matrix. This novel radiolytic process has potential for the simultaneous desulphurization and demineralization of coal slurries prior to pipeline transportation, being technologically feasible and economically viable

Application of Instrumental Techniques for Determining the Physico-chemical Properties of Airborne Particulate Matter

Coal mining and other coal utilization technologies need crushing of coal which are usually carried out in dry condition therefore a considerable amount of dust is generated. The characterization of the dust particles for size distribution analysis, important trace metal composition, nature of organic aerosol have been carried out by laser based particle size analyzer, atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, the data reveal that more than 50% of suspended particulate matter are in the size range of 6.38 to 9.63µm in the morning area. Further the suspended particulate matters obtained from main roadside contains 10-18% benzene soluble fraction and lead is present in higher concentration in comparison with other areas. The data further revealed that suspended particulate matter of Jharia coalfield contain coal particles, quartz and clay minerals encapsulated with different hydrocarbons compounds probably originated from vehicular exhausts and trace metals, like pb, etc

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale. Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter; identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation; analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution; describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity; and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes