Abstract:Coal is one of the most important primary energy sources in China. How to efficiently exploit and develop coal resources is an important issue in scientific community. Affected by original deposition conditions, coal can contain a variety of associated mineral resources, the value of some associated minerals is even more than the coal resource itself. Hedong coal field in Shanxi province is an important production base with high-quality coking coal with a huge coal reserves in China. Based on the data analysis of gallium in Hedong coal field, distribution rule and industrial prospect of gallium in Hedong coal field have been analyzed. It is found that the gallium concentration in Hedong coal field is generally higher than that in Taiyuan formation in the vertical direction. In the coal layers, there are vertical differences, that is, coal contents of gallium in the lower part of coal layers are higher than in the upper part. It is concluded that the distance of provenance area is an important factor affecting the contents of gallium in north and south part of Hedong coalfield; the differences of coal-accumulating environment may be the main reason casuing the differences of gallium content, and the ash content difference may be the main factor causing the differences of Hedong coalfield in Shanxi formation and Taiyuan formation vertically. From the perspective of industry, gallium in the lower part of Shanxi formation in the north and central part of Hedong coalfield is close to industrial grade and has good development potential.
