SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 13 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which coal is low-grade, brown and soft with high moisture content?

(a)Metallurgical
(b)Anthracite
(c)Bituminous
(d)Lignite

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Lignite is the brown coal of the ranking sequence: low grade, soft and high in moisture.

Coal is ranked by how much carbon the buried plant matter has retained under heat and pressure — peat, then lignite, then bituminous, then anthracite. Lignite sits low on that ladder, so it carries less carbon, more water and less heating value.

India's principal lignite reserves are at Neyveli in Tamil Nadu, where the coal is burnt to generate electricity close to the mine rather than shipped. That is option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Metallurgical — Metallurgical coal is not a rank at all — it is high-grade bituminous coal set aside for smelting iron in blast furnaces. It is hard and dry, the opposite of what the stem describes.
(b)
Anthracite — Anthracite is the highest-grade hard coal, with the greatest carbon content and the least moisture. It sits at the far end of the ladder from lignite.
(c)
Bituminous — Bituminous coal forms at greater depth and temperature than lignite and is the grade in widest commercial use. It is harder, drier and richer in carbon.

Concept

Coal is fossilised plant matter, and its rank records how far the fossilisation has gone.

Peat is the starting point, barely carbonised and unusable as fuel at scale. Lignite is the next step: brown, soft, high in moisture, low in carbon. Bituminous coal, buried deeper and hotter, is the commercial workhorse. Anthracite is the end of the sequence, hard and almost pure carbon.

Because lignite is bulky and wet, transporting it wastes energy, so it is burnt at pithead stations near the mine.

Every word in the stem is a rank marker — low-grade, brown, soft, high moisture. Read them as a set rather than one at a time, because the ranks of coal are distinguished on exactly these two variables: carbon content and moisture.

Key facts

Coal ranks in order of carbon content: peat, lignite, bituminous, anthracite.
India's principal lignite reserves lie at Neyveli in Tamil Nadu and feed electricity generation.
Anthracite is the highest-quality hard coal.
Metallurgical coal is high-grade bituminous coal used for smelting iron in blast furnaces.

Study next

The four ranks of coal and the carbon content of eachIndia's coalfields: Gondwana deposits against tertiary lignite depositsPithead thermal power stations and why low-rank coal is burnt at the mine

Common traps

Treating metallurgical as a rank of coal when it is a use-based label for a grade of bituminous.
Confusing lignite with peat, which is one step lower still and barely carbonised.

This is the descriptive form SSC likes: it states the properties and asks for the name. The mineral question at 18 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.25 has the same shape, describing an inosilicate amphibole used in highway construction and railroad ballast and asking you to name hornblende.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.