The thermal energy capacities of the Electric Power Industry of Serbia (EPS) are based on lignite, which is concentrated in two large coal/mining basins. The first one is the Kostolac-Kovin Coal Basin with a total area of about 320 km2 and has about 5.7 billion tons of geological resources and lignite reserves. Coal mining has been going on for more than 150 years. Also, the second one is Kolubara Coal Basin. It has an exploitable area of about 200 km2 and a total of about 4.1 billion tons of geological resources and lignite reserves. Coal mining has been going on for more than 130 years. In total, in the previous years, EPS had almost 10 billion tons of geological resources and lignite reserves in both coal mining areas. Out of this, a good part of about 1.9 billion tons has already been mined. And furthermore, there are huge amounts of coal left to be mined. In this paper, we deal with the geochemical characteristics of coal seams in both coal basins and perform a comparative analysis with selected anthropological, archeological and contemporary construction materials based on examples from Serbia, Europe and worldwide. The author and readers are most interested in whether heavy metals from coal cause a chemical footprint in time. We will deal with this issue in the following chapters.
Bogoljub Vučković (Wed,) studied this question.