Analysis of Washability Data for Eastern Kentucky Coals

For the past five years, KGS has been converting paper records of industry coal quality data obtained from exploration core holes into digital format. Initial work was primarily devoted to matching quality records to existing drill hole database entries, and correlating analyses to cored intervals. Data associated with analysis results were entered into electronic spreadsheets. Approximately 10,000 quality analyses from 50 7.S-minute quadrangles in eastern Kentucky have been processed. The second phase of database construction is to verify coal bed correlations in order to determine the extent to which analysis results could be directly compared from one location to another. This was a rigorous exercise of establishing bench architecture for individual coals in selected study areas and applying bed tags to correlated intervals. Data sets from these studies were compiled to facilitate analysis of spatial variation for each quality parameter. These studies were limited to basic thickness and proximate data, and included three study areas of between two and four 7.S-minute quadrangles. Washability data were compiled during these studies, but were reduced to a single "normalized" record that approximated a whole-seam, moisture-free analysis for comparison to similar data. If bench or increment analyses were provided without a corresponding whole seam analysis, a weighted average was calculated. Each washability data set differs with respect to the format and methods of analysis, one of the original reasons for excluding them from the studies. Preliminary examination of the compiled data suggests that there are sufficient numbers of analyses with comparable formats to proceed with a pilot study of washability characteristics.