I live about 20 miles from an open pit mine that produces 3.3 million tons of lignite a year.  locals can come load up or they will load trucks for a small fee. 

I am going to be building a side blast forge, hopefully that should help with impurities.

I understand lignite has lower btu per volume... but is it possible to make up for that by just burning up lots of lignite?

My question is if a person can get lignite real cheap can i use it to forge with the right set up?

Try it and let us know your results. Just don't buy a ton of it yet. 

J

Sounds like it's worth a try curious for the results.

If you can get it for free it has got to be worth a try, grab a trial load and compare it to whatever other fuel you have handy. Let us know how it goes.

As peat has been used for smithing in areas where it is pretty much the only local fuel; Lignite should work.  You may need to sort of charcoal it first.  I would suggest researching peat forges and or cow patty forges for design suggestions (how fine is the lignite???)

for size.. It gets broken down quite a bit at the mine ,loaded onto cars and then gets powderized before being used at the power plant so I was hoping to get my hands on the stuff that they load into the coal cars. it gets run through a cone crusher before loading onto the coal cars. I have not seen the physical size in a while, i don't remember how big it is after the crusher. 

I am going to build the side blast and see how it works. I am just researching for building my first forge

I got a huge amount of lignite coal for basically nothing and am going to try it in the forge, we have the finest bituminous coal in the world here in nz but its not available 

Choice of fuel can be dictated by what is either physically or economically available.  If all you can get/afford  is lignite and you can get metal hot with it then there is nothing wrong with using it.  There may be better fuels but you have to use what you have available.

Let us know how it works out.  There are places in the US and Europe where lignite or brown coal is available.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

We have had some discussions about lignite coal, here is but one.

https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/66420-lignite-or-brown-coal-as-a-forge-fuel/

 

Might combine it with lump charcoal and see how it works for you.

I was told by an old hillbilly once, to use whatever fuel was handy, be it wood, coal, coke, charcoal, corn cobs, etc., just as long as it would burn, and get the thing hot.