Comparison of Conditioned Radial Bases Function Approach and Kriging: Estimation of Calorific Value in a Coal Field

Due to low production cost, coal is still the most important source of electricity production worldwide. This important position of coal also makes the evaluation of coal resources important. One of the most important attributes to be assessed in this evaluation is estimating the calorific value distribution of deposit. In geostatistical estimation currently Kriging and its variants are being used widely. Alternatively new techniques are being developed and one of them is the Radial Based Functions based method. In this study, Conditioned Radial Basis Function (CRBF) is used to estimate the calorific value distribution of a coal deposit while estimations are also performed with Ordinary Kriging (OK). Results of both estimation methods are compared with respect to composite calorific values. Results show that CRBF produced a higher estimation range than OK with closer mean to composite. However, like OK, results are still smoother than the composite values.