GB/T 46291-2025General rules of coal petrographic analysis (English PDF)

Foreword

This document complies with the provisions of GB/T 1.1-2020 "Standardization Work Guidelines Part 1: Structure and Drafting Rules of Standardization Documents". Drafting.

Please note that some content in this document may involve patents. The issuing organization of this document assumes no responsibility for identifying patents.

This document was proposed by the China National Coal Association.

This document is under the jurisdiction of the National Coal Standardization Technical Committee (SAC/TC42).

This document was drafted by: China Coal Technology & Engineering Group Xi'an Research Institute Co., Ltd., Xi'an Coal Technology Testing Co., Ltd., and Shaanxi Provincial Energy Bureau.

Quality Supervision and Inspection Institute.

The main drafters of this document are: Xiao Wenzhao, Li Bingang, Liu Shande, Song Xiaozhong, Dang Hongyan, Lei Ying, and Tang Shan.

General provisions for coal and petrographic analysis methods

1 Scope

This document specifies the classification and nomenclature, sample collection and preparation, analysis and testing, result expression, and methodological refinement related to coal and rock analysis tests.

Density, testing records, and testing reports.

This document applies to various coal and rock analysis test methods, standards, and documents.

2 Normative references

GB/T 474

GB/T 475

GB/T 6948

GB/T 8170

GB/T 8899

GB/T 12937

GB/T 15588

GB/T 15589

GB/T 15590

GB/T 16773

GB/T 18023

GB/T 19222

GB/T 19494.1

GB/T 40485

GB/T 44355

GB/T 46288

GB/T 46289

3 Terms and Definitions

The terms and conditions defined in GB/T 12937, GB/T 15588, GB/T 15589, GB/T 18023, GB/T 46289 and GB/T 46288 are as follows.

The definition applies to this document.

4 Categorization and Naming

4.1 The macroscopic coal and petrographic classification of bituminous coal is based on GB/T 18023.

About this edition

GB/T 46291-2025 is the current edition. It was issued on 5 October 2025 and has been in force since 1 May 2026.

The interval between issue and effect is the transition period. It exists so that producers, laboratories and buyers can requalify products, revise procedures and use up documentation before the new text becomes the one that applies. The date on this page is the official one from the record of the Standardization Administration.

Classification and status

GB/T 46291-2025 is classified under ICS 73.040. ICS is the International Classification for Standards, the same scheme used by ISO and by the national bodies of most countries, which is what allows a Chinese standard to be placed beside its foreign counterparts on subject rather than on number.

Its Chinese Standard Classification code is CCS D 26. CCS is the domestic scheme, a letter for the sector and two digits for the subject within it, and it is the code by which the standard is filed and searched in China.

The GB/T prefix marks a recommended national standard. It is not, in itself, law: it becomes binding when a contract names it, when a regulation or a mandatory standard refers to it, or when a producer declares conformity with it. In practice that covers most of the cases in which it will be read — a purchase specification, an inspection agreement or a certification scheme.

How a Chinese national standard is set out

Chinese national standards are drafted to the rules of GB/T 1.1, which fixes the order in which a standard is set out. The document opens with a foreword recording the issuing bodies, the relationship to any previous edition and the technical committee responsible for it. Clause 1 is the scope. Clause 2 lists the normative references — the other standards that have to be applied together with this one, and without which its requirements cannot be met. Clause 3 gives the terms and definitions. The technical clauses follow: the requirements themselves, the test or measurement methods by which conformity is established, the inspection rules that say how a lot is sampled and judged, and, for a product standard, the provisions on marking, packaging, transport and storage. Annexes, normative or informative, come last.

GB/T 46291-2025 runs to 15 pages in the English translation. What is delivered is the complete document in that order: every clause, every table, every figure and every annex of the Chinese original, with the same numbering, so that a reference to a clause number in a contract or a test report points to the same place in both languages.

About this English translation

The English edition of GB/T 46291-2025 is a full translation of the official Chinese text, not a summary, an abstract or a machine rendering left unchecked. Clause and subclause numbers, table and figure numbers and annex letters are those of the original, because they are what a specification, a purchase order or a test report cites.

Technical terms are translated against the vocabulary standards of the same field, so that a term used in GB/T 46291-2025 reads the same way as in the other Chinese standards it is used beside. Where a term has an established English form in an ISO or IEC document on the same subject, that form is used; where China's term has no foreign counterpart, it is translated literally and the Chinese is kept alongside it rather than replaced by an approximation.

Quantities, units and symbols are carried over unchanged. Chinese standards use SI, so a value in the translation is the value in the original document, not a conversion, and a limit read from the English text is the limit that will be applied by a Chinese inspection body reading the Chinese one.

This page is compiled from the official publication record: the standard number and both titles, the issuing bodies, the dates of issue and effect, the ICS and CCS classification. The requirements, limits, tables and test conditions are in the document itself.