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> You can't put coal in a pipeline.

Yes you can!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_pipeline

A slurry is transported in one variety of these. The trick is to induce a swirl in the flow, so even though particles are constantly falling out of suspension, they stay suspended. It's mathematically analogous to how putting a twist in magnetic field lines in a tokamak (or stellarator) prevents ExB effects from driving the plasma into the wall, as they would in just a plain toroidal magnetic field.

Lots of water is needed and drying the coal before burning it adds cost.



Really interesting, thanks for the link!

Acre-feet as a unit just made me realize how many options you get for volume with multiple base units (a foot-mile-inch is ~12m³ in case anyone was wondering). The non-metric system continues to impress (not in a good way)!




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