Coal Burning Power Plant Lakes

[Anonymous]

I am trying to create a lake for my power plant, we had one similar in our town that the utility would pump/dump the slag/by products from the plant. It was always very black looking and they would have bulldozers it seemed pushing the slag or black earth up to make a retaining wall. I am trying to google for pictures to get a perspective of what they looked like and also how they maintained them. Any help pointers would be great.

[TomDiehl]

Sounds more like it would be a settling pond. After water was used in the plant for cleaning, it would be dumped here to let the solids settle out. Many of these are now required for simpler thing like parking lot drainage.

[Anonymous]

Tom

That is probably more correct, I have been searching Google like a banshee but not having much luck on finding a closeup picture to see how or what color the water would be, I almost imagine it's very brackish and black, with very little movement. I was also trying to find some piping that can be gleamed for replicating. I will try the term settling pond and see what I get.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Have you tried the satelitte photos on Google Maps? I just looked up the NIPSCO plants outside of Gary and Wheatfield, IN. The one in Wheatfield in probably the best bet. Very nice view. Hope this helps

[leighant]

I am not all that familiar with your part of the world but.... I never heard of a power plant using a pond to dump "slag" or "byproducts". I am much more familiar with power plants having a cooling pond for water. The coal or whatever fuel is burned to make steam for steam turbines which turn the generators. Then the used steam has to be cooled before it can be discharged into waterways off the property.
I am familiar with CPL Barney Davis plant at Flour Bluff, Corpus Christi, Texas which took salt water from Laguna Madre (inland bay) through power plant on a peninsula and discharged into cooling pond eventually to go into Cayo del Oso, a different inland body of water from the one where water obtained. I don't think salt water was used directly to make steam but used in some kind of heat exchange with fresh water contained in steam generating system.
The Coleto Creek plant near Victoria, Texas has a big lake as a cooling pond.
The South Texas nuclear project near Bay City, Texas has a big cooling pond.
The old no-longer-operating Nueces Bay plant (ca 1950 technology I believe) discharged cooling water directly into a shallow bay without a cooling pond.

Do you suppose what you were looking at may have been some sort of cooling pond rather than one that handled any kind of suspended material. Regardless of whether the pond is for material or cooling water, if you are looking at any operation within last 30 years, you could probably find out by researching publicly available environmental reports. You could probably even call the PR office of the utility-- don't tell them you are a model railroader-- just ask where you can find environmental data, and they'll probably tell you, "We have done it all according to requirements and publicly filed our environmental impact report as public record, available" etc. It could well be in the local history and government documents collection at your local public library.

[Anonymous]

Coal fired power plants use ponds for two different things.

First, a settling pond is used to settle fly ash and slag out of the water. This would be water that came out of their pollution control equipment from washing down their precipitators. This would also be the general waste water from the plant drains. Dirty, grimy, and cruddy stuff. The fly ash is more gey in color, but everything else caould be pretty cruddy.

You'll also see the waste water from the cooling towers pass through the settling pond. This water is high in solids, and probably warmer than desired. It'll be allowed to cool and settle out any solids before it passes into a local stream.

No plant uses raw water in their steam cycle. The steam cycle water has carefully controlled chemistry to control corrosion and is free of solids.

As for the color of the pond, it'll be driven by both the color of the surrounding soils and the fly ash. The solids may build up to 10 feet thick before the pond is cleaned out.

Mark in Utah

[Leon Silverman]

Leighant:
I am sure you are familiar with the ashpans pound on coal-fired steam engines. Coal fired power plants also produce ash. This ash, instead of falling out of the bottom of the boiler, goes up with the flue gases since the coal is ground into a powder prior to injection the boiler. The EPA frowns on this ash (which also includes Sulphur dioxide) being discharged into the atmosphere. Precipitators are used to remove these contaminators from the exhaust of the powere plant. These precipitators utilize water treated with other chemicals (hydrate lime and sodium bicarbonate) sprayed into the airstream. The effluent from these precipitaors would constitute your power plant "byproduct".
Used steam is not released into the atmosphere. It is condensed back into water and reheated. Typical operating temperatures for power plant condensers is around 85 to 100 degrees Farenheit. However, this temperature may sometimes still be too high to be allowed to go back into the the cooling water source without being a detriment to the fish or wildlife in that source. This is where your cooling ponds or towers come into play. A typical power plant utilizes a huge volume of water . Without the cooling towers or ponds, the discharge water temperature would alter the ecology of the area surround the discharge. (Anyone for par-boiled fish or frogs?) .

[TomDiehl]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Leon Silverman

Leighant:
Without the cooling towers or ponds, the discharge water temperature would alter the ecology of the area surround the discharge. (Anyone for par-boiled fish or frogs?) .

So instead of catch and release, we'd have catch and eat.

[Leon Silverman]

TomDiehl:
Only if you like Sushi. The warm water would kill the fish, not cook them. Now, if you suspended the fish in the plant's exhaust stack, you would be able to smoke it.

[leighant]

Quote: "Typical operating temperatures for power plant condensers is around 85 to 100 degrees Farenheit. However, this temperature may sometimes still be too high to be allowed to go back into the the cooling water source without being a detriment to the fish or wildlife in that source. This is where your cooling ponds or towers come into play. A typical power plant utilizes a huge volume of water . Without the cooling towers or ponds, the discharge water temperature would alter the ecology of the area surround the discharge."

One plant in South Texas with which I am familiar was required to have a cooling pond to prevent heated water from going directly into the environment. But the heated water was used to raise a variety of tropical shrimp that do not normally thrive here. Shrimp grew to be three feet long. The power plant was next to the King Ranch and some wags joked that that those giant shrimps might escape and go eat a cow.

[Anonymous]

Brings new meaning to putting a shrimp on the barbi...... How about a shrimp on the spit??

Mark in Utah