By the early 1980s, the mobilization of sulfur from Interior coal exceeded that of Appalachian by about 1.5 million tons of sulfur per year. Since 1970, Western coal has contributed to sulfur mobilization, but it accounts for only about a quarter of the tonnage mobilized from either the Appalachian or the Interior region and only about 12 percent of the total amount of coal sulfur mobilization. Trends in coal sulfur production for the Appalachian, Interior, and Western coal-producing regions. Surface Transfer Matrix. A key link in the flow of coal sulfur is its transfer from the producers to the consumers of coal.
Railroads transport more than half of the total coal shipped each year.
Unit trains provide high-speed shipments of large quantities of coal to electric power plants, often hauling more than 10,000 tons per train. As an example, a map of the resulting consumed coal sulfur content data for 1978 is given in Figure 6. The northern and mid-Atlantic states consume coal with a content about 1.4 percent sulfur. The midwestern states, as expected, consume coal with the highest sulfur content. Normalized surface transfer maps of shipment to consumer states from coal producing regions.