Saving Yorkshire

Yorkshire – one of many UK counties to be hit hard by the slow and seemingly terminal decline of the nation’s once thriving coal industry – is now home to a project aimed at breathing life back into the county’s resource sector.

Alkane Energy is looking to bring back to life three of Yorkshire’s abandoned coal mines by redeveloping them into coalbed methane (CBM) projects.

The resource company is looking to harness methane gas stored in the abandoned coal seams of the mines.

Following initial teething problems at Rotherham’s Maltby coal mine, Alkane said the site is now producing record levels of methane gas.

The Prince of Wales coal mine in Wakefield began full CBM production in January and Alkane said production is going according to plan.

The company also has high hopes for Markham Main mine at Doncaster, where it is currently drilling to test for methane levels.

Yorkshire’s coalfields tend to generate more methane than other areas of the country, making its former mines a rich source of future power production.

Alkane said that methane from the former coal mines will be harnessed to help meet the UK power shortfall which could result in power cuts as early as next winter.

In June, Ofgem said that without action the risk of power cuts could be as high as one chance in four by the winter of 2015/16.

At a time when unrest in the Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East threatens to destabilise UK power supplies, Alkane said it is able and ready to help meet the shortfall.

Alkane’s CEO, Neil O’Brien, confirmed the group will soon hear whether its bid to supply 60 MW of standby power for this winter has been successful.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change, alongside Ofgem and the National Grid, are introducing capacity initiatives to ensure the UK has 400 MW of reserve power this winter.

At Maltby, the closure of the colliery took longer than planned, which Alkane said was not within its control. The initial plan was that the shaft sealing operations would take five weeks, but in the event they took 13 weeks.

“We are pleased to report that Maltby returned to full production in June,” said Mr O’Brien. “We have seen a number of record production figures for total group coal mine methane production since this date. In particular, current output from Maltby is ahead of expectations and we expect production in the second half to compensate for the delayed shaft sealing operations.

“We should be back on track by Christmas. We’ve not lost the gas, it’s still there.”

According to the Yorkshire Post, with all eight engines running Maltby can produce 10 MW of electricity from the CBM.

“We always knew Maltby had some of the highest concentrations of gas to coal, but we couldn’t get at it while the miners were still there,” said O’Brien.

“Maltby will be a very good site over the years. The 15-year lease runs for another 14 years and could well be chugging along after that.”

The group is working on the drilling of new sites and it expects to know the outcome of tests at Markham Main by the autumn.

“We’re hopeful,” said O’Brien. “It could be a 4 MW site.”

The Prince of Wales colliery, which is in a corner of the reclamation scheme, opened last Christmas and O’Brien said the 2 MW facility is “going well”.

Alkane also has plans to extract methane from a fourth former Yorkshire coal mine, Newmarket in South Leeds.

Overall, Alkane’s installed capacity reached 140 MW in the six months to 30 June, up from 81 MW in H1 2013.

In the first half of the year, its sites delivered 85 GWh, down from 94 GWh in H1 2013.

“This was a satisfactory performance given that production was disrupted at Maltby as the mine closure operation took place,” O’Brien said.

The arrival of new resource industry interest to Yorkshire will be a great boost to an area that has suffered the effects of coal mine closures since the 1980s.

It will also increase confidence that new investment and redevelopment is possible in other areas of the UK, which have been hit hard by the decline in the coal industry. The effects of the coal mine closures was recently revealed in research carried out by Sheffield Hallam University to be both severe and long lasting.

Edited from various sources by Sam Dodson

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/cbm/08102014/using-methane-from-yorkshire%E2%80%99s-abandoned-coal-mines-cbm124/