Coal Log Pipelines - The Answer to the perpetual PRB transport problems?

[Anonymous]

If BNSF and UP can't get their act together, this advanced form of moving coal via pipellne might become the answer to the coal industry's prayers:

http://www.missouri.edu/~cprc/Facts%20about%20CLP.html
http://www.capsu.org/library/documents/0028.html

The concept is different from coal slurry pipelines in that the coal is compressed into logs, then floated through the pipepine. CLP uses about 1/4 of the water that a typical coal slurry pipeline uses. The article also states that PRB coal makes the best logs. That and the low water usage would make this technology ameable for PRB coal interests in Wyoming.

[arbfbe]

Still, water and how you gonna get it and what are you going to do with it once you are done with it? Even at 25% of a coal slurry line it is an export western states just cannot afford to lose. There is no end in sight of the current 5 year drought and no western state government is going to allow water to flow out to water rich states. Perhaps if the coal companies find a way to move the brackish waste water from coal bed methane drilling they might look at the idea again. Then the states on the receiving end of that transaction will surely balk. It is nice to know the technology works and it might be a great way to move coal from the docks to the power plants in an import scenario but it is pretty much dead in the lack of water in Wyoming, Montana, Utah and the Dakotas.

[Murphy Siding]

futuremodal: I'm telling you man, there IS no water in the PRB. Figure out how to roll the coal into bowling balls, and roll it through the pipeline using compressed air, and you might have something![:)]

[Junctionfan]

The only thing like that they would be able to do is build a really really long conveyer system. Should be cheaper then extra rail capacity shouldn't it?

[Anonymous]

I wonder if coal logs could share a pipeline with crude oil or refined products. Doesn't someone want to build a new pipeline down from Canada? They send cleaning pigs through oil pipelines all the time and they used to use pigs to seperate different products.

[Anonymous]

There are still solutions to the problem they have now that are cheaper then building coal logs to all the power plants. If they can't figure out who's going to pay for the cleanup and that stuff you can spray on that crusts the top of the load., then who's gonna pay for new logs?

Look at Australia, they seem to have a coal car design with a narrow opening on top of the coal hopper for loading, it reduces dust and wind resistance too.

[BNSFGP38]

NS seemed to solve this problem years ago and there not bankrupt. BNSF and UP are nothing more than cheap--no matter where you stand.

The technology is out there, just how long before the railroad accountants say "Uncle" after writeing out settlement checks, maitnence checks,new equipment checks, investor checks, labor checks vs. loaf topping and spraying the tops remains to be seen.

[Anonymous]

No answers here, just a bunch of greenhorn questions from a novice:
To what point would a slurry-type project need to carry the coal outside PRB? How many miles distance and what elevational change is involved? What capacity improvements, measured in say trainloads_per_day would such a project yield? What about the rail capacity issues forward of the point where the watered-coal is reprocessed and reloaded to rail?

[Murphy Siding]

No answers here either. Back 25 years ago, when this was first tried,the three main challenges were: 1) Financing, 2)Lack of any water in the PRB, and 3) Railroads not wanting to give easements over or under their ROW's (<who would of thought?).

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

No answers here either. Back 25 years ago, when this was first tried,the three main challenges were: 1) Financing, 2)Lack of any water in the PRB, and 3) Railroads not wanting to give easements over or under their ROW's (<who would of thought?).

Murph - There is not a "lack of water" in the PRB so much as there is no expendable water. One idea that could have merit is to run the coal log pipeline as a closed loop system, with the water from the end point being pumped back to the origin. This would cost more, and there would still be some water losses, but even with the added cost is probably still more economical than building new rail capacity by nickel and dime attrition.

It is clear that the demand for PRB coal will greatly exceed the willingness of the railroads to add the necessary capacity. The entities that will take the hit from this underperformance is not the railroads, but the mines and the utilities. They are the ones who would likely finance any alternatives to rail transport, at least in the immediate vicinity of the basin. The point is the get the coal from the mines to the point where capacity is more evident, e.g. the UP main at Rawlins, the BNSF main at Billings. You don't necessarily need a CLP all the way to Indiana.

MWH - Your snide comments are unbecoming for a so-called professional. David P. Morgan or J. David Ingles would never slip to your level.

[jeaton]

Interesting concept, but searching the web did not find any significant progress reported after 2000. Dr. Liu, the head researcher on the project helped form and is part a company that seems to be focusing on development of some of the technologies for applications other than moving coal.

I did not find any authoritive explainations as to why the prospects for piping out of the PRB seems to have gone by the boards. There was a long list of mining companies and electric utilities providing support for the research, and if there was money to be made by the deal, I have no doubt the power utilities would have been all over it. They do a pretty good job of figuring out the money thing.

Either it's that or a conspiracy among the rain gods.

Jay

[dehusman]

Since PRB coal goes to literally dozens of utilities as far away as Pennsylvania, Texas and Georgia, how will a pipline reach all those utilities?

You either have to dedicate the pipeline to one utility (very expensive) or put it in a different transportation mode at the end of the pipeline. If you are going to put it in a railcar, you might as well do it at the minehead.

The premise also assumes that the PRB is at capacity. I don't believe that is true. Personally I think the mines are at capacity to produce the coal and the utilities are at capacity to unload the trains. The current PRB issues are one of defferred maintenace by the BNSF and there will be congestion until that work is caught up.

One technical question would be how stable is the log if if gets banged around for several hundred miles in a pipline. Even if the clearance is very tight around the log there will still have to be some gap so the logs can get around curves. I would think that the logs would begin to decompose around the edges and there would be a lot of erosion in the pipe due to heavy logs grinding against the pipe walls.

Dave H.

[miniwyo]

Murphy, We have the same problem in this part of Wyoming as they do in the PRB, It is not the problem of no water, it is the problem of how deep you want to drill to get to the water.

[Murphy Siding]

futuremodal: You need to take a vacation to the PRB. Really! There is no water! I lived in Gillette in the early 80's. There is no river,creek or stream of water in Gillette. There is "Gillette Fishing Lake" there. It is about the size of a Motel 6 parking lot. It exists because it is the low spot in town. The countryside around there is 75% red, like the clay, and 25% brownish/silver from the sagebrush. Municipal water is piped in from out of state. It's dry and dusty. There is no water/therefore there is no expendable water. Twenty-five years ago there was no water. At the time, the parties involved tried to devise a plan to use Missouri River water from 350 miles away. It didn't work then. I can't imagine it would work any better now.

[martin.knoepfel]

Why not refine the coal to oil and export it via an oil-pipeline? For me, this seems to be a much easier solution than a coal-slurry-pipeline. This method is feasible and has been done in Germany (during WW II and later in the GDR) and in South Africa, when the country was under economic sanctions because of the apartheid-policy.

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by martin.knoepfel

Why not refine the coal to oil and export it via an oil-pipeline? For me, this seems to be a much easier solution than a coal-slurry-pipeline. This method is feasible and has been done in Germany (during WW II and later in the GDR) and in South Africa, when the country was under economic sanctions because of the apartheid-policy.

The method is feasible,but I don't think it's affordable.

[CSXrules4eva]

QUOTE: Originally posted by goat

There are still solutions to the problem they have now that are cheaper then building coal logs to all the power plants. If they can't figure out who's going to pay for the cleanup and that stuff you can spray on that crusts the top of the load., then who's gonna pay for new logs?

Look at Australia, they seem to have a coal car design with a narrow opening on top of the coal hopper for loading, it reduces dust and wind resistance too.

Ya know I was told that this solution that is sprayed on top of the coal loads on hoppers and gondolas would decrease the amount of coal dust blow off. However, UP and BNSF and any other railroad that travels along the PRB doesn't want to invest in the solution because it would cost too much money. They said that with the maintainence costs presently, the usage of this solution wouldn't be economical. I'm also sure that the solution would have some effect on the envirnment, which will then bring the EPA and DEP into the picture most likly limiting it's use.

I also think that the "coal companies" wouldn't pay to have a pipeline built because, there is already a nice usefull rail line called the PRB which is in place and serving them. These companies wouldn't see logic in constructing a brand new pipline next to or in place of the trackage on the PRB. It also might cost the "coal companies" more money to maintain the pipeline were as now they don't have to pay for maintainence of the PRB.

[Anonymous]

Murph - There's water there, else why is there a problem with dewatering coalbed methane sites? It may not be fit to drink, but it'd do for coal carriage.

dehusman - The thought regarding using coal pipelines was to run them from the basin to more distant railheads, where the coal would be dried and transloaded to the unit trains at those sites, aka Rawlins, Billings, Cheyenne, or Scottsbluff, ect. Those sites are on mainlines which have more capacity than the Orin line does currently. And the Orin line is at capacity, else why are the utilities only scheduled to recieve 80% of their PRB coal demand this year?

martin - You're correct. Coal liquification is probably the best usage of vast amounts of coal, since the price of oil is well above the benchmark cost for commercially viable coal to liquid fuels technologies. The US can always run new power plants on nuclear technology for it's electricity needs, but vehicles (and the infrastructure that serves them) are geared for gasoline and diesel fuels. Only railroads have the characteristic that can utilize energy by wire, while trucks, planes, and barges gotta have petrol.

[Murphy Siding]

Originally posted by futuremodal

Murph - There's water there, else why is there a problem with dewatering coalbed methane sites? It may not be fit to drink, but it'd do for coal carriage.



Where is the water? They have deep wells that produce water that smells and tastes like rotten eggs (sulfer) and dog barf mixed together. Are you saying there is now a plentiful supply of yucky tasting water? [xx(]

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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