What will you think of when talking about Xinjiang? It is a delicious and juicy cantaloupe, fragrant walnuts, or snow-white and warm cotton; it is the largest Taklamakan Desert in the desert in China, and it is also the Populus euphratica known as the "desert warrior".
Xinjiang is very large, accounting for one-sixth of the entire China area, and it contains rich mineral resources on this vast land. Among them, Xinjiang's coal resources account for almost 40% of the country's total coal.
These coals are wealth given to Xinjiang by nature, but Xinjiang has also suffered from fires because of them. The longest time of has been burned for 129 years.
Qing Dynasty and Xinjiang
By the Ming Dynasty, the role of coal was further developed and was already the main material for iron smelting. In the Ming Dynasty, the book " Tiangong Kaiwu " by Song Yingxing in records that coal is born in the sky for training Jinshi. For the burning iron in the furnace, coal is seven out of ten (of) and charcoal is three out of ten (of) of 10 (of) of charcoal.
At this time, coal was the mainstream material to cause fire. However, after the Yuan Dynasty, the power of the Ming Dynasty gradually shrank back to the mainland, and Xinjiang was not under the rule of the Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, Xinjiang's coal resources are still being explored slowly and have not been further developed.
In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Xinjiang was ruled by Junggar Khanate . In 1755, Qianlong took advantage of the civil strife of Junggar and sent troops to defeat Junggar's army. Two years later, Junggar was declared destroyed and Xinjiang was under the rule of the Qing government.
During the Qianlong period, the coal resources in Xinjiang began to be developed. not only encourages commercial and office coal mining in Xinjiang, but also has regulations on private offices.
In addition, the government also stipulates that in the current Hami area, "all defense areas in the villages and defense areas shall be inspected and mined."
After that, Xinjiang's coal resource mining reached a peak period.
Coal can generate fire, boil water, keep warm and cook, which is an extremely convenient material. The Qing government's conniving management of coal mining has led to coal wells of all sizes spread all over Xinjiang. A well can accommodate hundreds of people, and the smallest ones can also accommodate dozens of people!
People have made great progress in the utilization of coal, but the coal mining technology is still in its early stages, the mining rate of coal mines is extremely low, and there are no fire prevention measures. There have been records of coal mine fires during the Qianlong period.
There was a memorial during the Qianlong period: "In the outer kiln in Huaiyi, coal mining from Zeng was very beneficial to civilian use. In the fourth year of Qianlong, people were temporarily banned due to coal gasification. "
At this time, the wanton coal mining had caused a fire, but people did not realize the seriousness of the problem. was just closing the coal well for treatment.
In the early years of the Guangxu period, people found that the area of Changji Sulfur Gully in Xinjiang was rich in coal resources, so there were endless people mining and coal transportation, but it was just primitive coal mining technology and no safety prevention measures.
The backward coal mining technology brings great fire hazards.
Some small coal mines not only do not pay attention to fire prevention, but also did not completely extinguish them after the fire broke out, and even found another place to re-mine them.
The weak fire prevention awareness has led to the fire repeating again. It has continued over and over again. More and more coal mines are burning, and the scope of the fire is getting bigger and bigger.
A few years later, this place was gradually surrounded by fire and smoke.
According to records, since 1874, the cracks in the sulfur groove area have been crisscrossed and thick smoke has spread, and the flames in the cracks of the rocks have been continuous all year round.
The " Flame Mountain " in reality
fire accidents are not only in the sulfur ditch, but also in other areas of Xinjiang. To this day, there are as many as eight key fire areas in Xinjiang recorded, and sulfur ditch ranks first. The reason why
is named Sulfur Groove is because the coal area of 12 kilometers north and south and 10 kilometers east and west is started to burn in 1847, and a large amount of crystalline sulfur precipitated due to its combustion is still known throughout the day.
The reason why the sulfur ditch fire is difficult to extinguish is that has caused extremely severe geological activities in Xinjiang due to its special geographical location. The coal seam originally buried deep underground is easily exposed. Once the exposed coal seam comes into contact with oxygen , a chemical reaction will occur.
plus Xinjiang The climate is drought and hot, and there is little rain all year round. Coal is prone to spontaneous combustion when it is around 40°C. Once is spontaneously ignited, it is easy to cause coalfield fires, and it is also one of the reasons why fires occur in the cracks in the sulfur groove.
In addition, the unique coal structure of the sulfur valley coal field area is different from other coal areas. Here, there are a large amount of crystalline sulfur produced by spontaneous combustion of the coal field. Sulphur burns in the air, not only produces harmful gases, but also prone to explosions.
Therefore, it is extremely difficult to extinguish the sulfur ditch fire.
During the Qing Dynasty, fire extinguishing technology was not perfect enough, and people's understanding of fire extinguishing was limited to extinguishing. Without considering the particularity of coal wells, there were more and more fires, so it was simply left unresolved.
In the following decades, China was in a period of turmoil, and the fire in the sulfur ditch was not further managed, and the fire lasted for a long time. By the 1960s, the fire in the sulfur ditch had burned for nearly a hundred years. has had a great impact on the surrounding ecological environment.
sulfur groove is only about 40 kilometers apart from Urumqi. The combustion of its coal well produces a large number of harmful gases and dust, such as carbon monoxide , carbon dioxide and other chemical gases that harm the environment, Urumqi is the first to be affected.
According to statistics, about 1.76 million tons of coal are burned naturally by the sulfur groove every year.
Through the theoretical calculation that coal does not completely burn , data on nearly 108,000 tons of toxic and harmful gases and nearly 1 ton of dust per year are obtained. These gases and dust are blown into the sky of Urumqi by the wind, seriously affecting the daily life of local people.
These products after coal combustion in coal fields, create a large number of harmful gases and dust in the low-altitude field. In the cloud and rain layer, it forms a large-scale acid rain through convection, and even shows signs of destroying the atmospheric ozone layer , which has extremely serious impact.
Toutunhe flowing through here has been polluted by coal ash floating everywhere, and the Toutunhe Reservoir is almost scrapped due to dust pollution. The soot and dust in the air has forced people living here to move away, causing great damage to the ecological environment.
Sulphurglades coalfield fire area has burned nearly 2.2 million square meters of lawn, and the forest has also been scorched and dead. From a distance, there is no bare tree among the mountains.
The description of Flaming Mountain in "Journey to the West" is : There is no spring or autumn here, it is hot all seasons, and no grass grows around it. Around the sulfur groove, the scene is consistent with it, so it is known as the "Flame Mountain" in reality.
Various elements in coal are burned at high temperature and undergo chemical reactions, producing compounds of different acid and alkali properties, permeating and contaminating surface water and shallow groundwater near the ignition zone. The water quality of these waters has changed.The heavy carbonic acid-type water that originally had a slightly sweet taste turned into salty bitter water filled with chloride and sulfide.
The fire in the sulfur ditch has reached the point where it has to be dealt with, not only to save the coal that has been consumed innocently, but also to save the living environment of the people around. Fire extinguishing is imminent.
fire extinguishing operation
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, extinguishing coalfield fires in Xinjiang has always been a key project of the country's attention, and the coalfield fire in Xinjiang's Sulfur Valley has attracted much attention.
According to statistics, since the sulphur groove has directly caused an annual economic loss of about 170 million yuan.
According to the technical director of the Sulfur Gully Coal Field Fire Zone project at that time, There are 18 coal fields ignition points in the Sulfur Gully Coal Field, the fire situation is complicated and the process is complicated.
According to the fire extinguishing technology at that time, it is formulated to eliminate the fire in the sulfur ditch coalfield. A total of 5 steps are required: peel and level, drilling, water injection, grouting , and loess covering.
The terrain of the sulfur groove is complex and uneven. If you want to completely extinguish the fire and eliminate spontaneous combustion, you need to sort out the terrain first. First, a bulldozer is used to pave the surface environment of the sulfur ditch fire area, and then cool down to reduce the temperature of the fire area.
After dealing with the surface problem, the problem of underground fire sources needs to be further dealt with. The surface where the temperature is stable begins to drill holes into the underground fire source, and after water injection and cooling treatment, mud is further injected to isolate the contact between the underground coal seam and oxygen.
learned from the work report of the fire extinguishing project team that 2.7905 million tons of water were used in the entire fire extinguishing operation.
After the fire is extinguished, it still needs to continue testing according to the standards. In particular, further analysis and tracking of the temperature of the fire zone and the gas concentration of .
This process takes one year to maintain. After passing the national standards, the fire extinguishing work at a fire point can be considered completely completed. After hundreds of years of repeated mining, the number of mines has exceeded 100. The fire extinguishing staff of
need to investigate hundreds of mines one by one and close the found combustion points and flammable points. should also prevent more blind mining to avoid new fire zones.
In the continuous operation of extinguishing fires at various ignition points of the sulfur groove, the fire extinguishing team has gradually formed a scientific fire extinguishing system in my country.
and according to their continuous practice, the first proposed "In the low-temperature oxidation of coal, the conversion of adsorbed oxygen into carbon dioxide is achieved through adsorption. In this reaction, coal is both a reactant and a catalyst." The dual function of
is the reason why coal will also undergo oxidation reactions at room temperature, and this theory is also the fundamental reason why coal in coal in coal wells will undergo spontaneous combustion. After discovering the cause, further solutions will be proposed based on this problem.
fire extinguishing team established the thermal equilibrium equation of coal oxidation reaction and wind flow, thus clarifying the calculation method for the reasonable thickness of the fire zone coverage.
controls the critical conditions of ignition in coal fields through water cooling and soil sealing , and achieves the results of scientific fire extinguishing.
One fire extinguishing point after another is constantly extinguished, and four years have passed.
Finally, in 2003, after spending nearly 100 million yuan, the last fire point of the sulfur groove was completely extinguished.
At this point, this fire that had been burning for 129 years has been completely dealt with.
This flame that spans two centuries was completely extinguished. The extinguishing of this top-ranked Xinjiang fire zone not only means that my country's technological progress in coal mine fire handling technology, but also means that my country's fire handling capabilities have reached a new level.
The sulfur groove reborn in the fire
The sulfur groove area has once again ushered in a new moment of life after hundreds of years of burning. How to manage this burned land is still a technical difficulty.
After years of burning, the sulfur groove is almost no longer suitable for growing any plants. Moreover, the abundant coal resources stored underground also make people love and hate this land.
In 2016, further development was made in extinguishing and utilization of coal fires. Hong Kong University of Mining and Technology Professor Zhou Fubao led his team to formulate a new underground coal fire management plan. This plan can not only speed up the extinguishing efficiency of coal fires, but also convert the heat energy generated by coal fire combustion into electricity for further utilization.
Sulfur groove has also been effectively managed, and it is no longer the bare and red scene like "Flame Mountain". This place is once again covered with green vegetation, full of vitality.
The new sulfur groove is not only green, but also because of the sulfur produced by the century-old combustion, the surrounding small hills, hills and other areas are distributed red. In addition to brown stones and green vegetation, the entire sulfur groove has colorful colors.
The sulfur groove that has been burned for a hundred years has been burned. After people's efforts and adjustments from nature, it has been presented to the world with a new look.
This is a paradise for photographers, this is a paradise for seekers of ruins, and this is also a paradise for tourists. The unique history, unique status quo, and the sulfur groove after being reborn from the fire are particularly charming. Its special beauty attracts countless tourists to come and watch.
People are looking for and discovering the shadow of the Flaming Mountain in "Journey to the West" in Sulfur Valley, and here they pay tribute to the heroes who have worked hard to put out the fire. The sulfur groove began in nature, was developed by the world, and finally returned to nature.
In the development of the world, if you blindly seek nature without restraint, you will eventually usher in dissatisfaction with nature, and the past of the sulfur groove is a good proof. While exploring natural resources, people cannot ignore the protection of the natural environment.
aims to "sustainable development". This strategy is in line with the trend of natural development and is also to leave a good foundation for future generations. Previous generations plant trees, and later generations enjoy the cool air. needs to be proved with practical actions.
Recklessly seeking without regard to consequences will eventually lay hidden dangers . In the process of exploring nature, human beings should always have a sense of awe, because nature nurtures all things, and nature is the starting point of life.
The rational development and utilization of resources can not only benefit society, but also give back to nature, thus ushering in a better future.
References
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-