Indication of biomarkers for coal origin traceability

Abstract

As the second-largest economy in the world, China has extremely rich coal resources, but the coal resources available for direct mining and utilization are relatively limited and need to rely heavily on imports. To ensure the quality and safety of imported coal, it is urgent to establish a set of effective origin traceability methods to trace the origin and identify the adulteration of imported coal. In this study, coal samples from five importing countries were analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and representative biological fingerprint compounds in the organic matter were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively to provide enlightenment for new methods and technologies of coal origin traceability. According to the relationship between Ph/nC18 and Pr/nC17, the coal samples of these five countries are considered to be in the low maturity stage. The coal of Australia, Russia, Malaysia and the Philippines is mainly type Ⅲ organic matter in a terrestrial oxidation environment. Except for the C56 sample from Indonesia, the distribution of n-alkanes in other coal samples from Indonesia and all coal samples from the Philippines mainly have medium and high molecular weight, suggesting that the source of parent material may be terrestrial higher plants. Different samples from different sedimentary environments have different types of organic matter input, and the application of specific indicators of organic matters is an effective method for geographical origin traceability of imported coal to a certain extent.

Keywords

• coal origin traceability
• coal import
• biological fingerprint characteristics
• gc-ms