I have read that most power plants consume a entire coal train of coal every day or about 10,000 tons. Yet how come we never see any ash trains? I would imagine burning 10,000 tons of coal would produce quite a bit of ash.
There are carloads of Fly Ash from some powerplants, one common use is to make high-carbon concrete, used in highway surfaces to slow abrasion. There was a recent movement of three solid trainloads of Fly Ash from the Martin Lake Powerplant in Texas to a customer near Rosemount, MN. I didn't hear what it was going to be used for.
Are ash trains not as exciting as coal trains, so we do not hear of them? What would be a ratio of coal trains to ash trains, if all ash is transported by rail?
Johnny
Perhaps there are other uses for coal ash; my grnadmother dumped her coal ashes around the fig bushes in the backyard; the figs were quite tasty.
Many power plants have on site ash dumps/landfills. Remember the TVA power plant about a year ago that had a large ash dump release into the (Tennessee?) River.
Deggesty Perhaps there are other uses for coal ash; my grnadmother dumped her coal ashes around the fig bushes in the backyard; the figs were quite tasty.
My grandparents did the same thing, they used coal ash to fertilize the garden, the results were spectacular! Tomatoes, stringbeans, carrots, you name it, and they tasted great! As a matter of fact, I asked around at work and it turns out quite a few of the guys grandparents did the same thing.
Lots of info/opnions in the below link.
http://tinyurl.com/94ljte5
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Coal ash is not recommended for vegetable gardens. The problem is that you don't know what is in it. Coal contains trace elements and the kinds of elements and concentration vary from coal seam to coal seam. The trace elements may only be in very small amounts, similar to amounts already in soil. Plants actually need trace elements and that can well explain why coal ash can work so well as a fertilizer. However, it can contain heavy metals such as cadmium and lead. Unless you are prepared to do a chemical analysis if you put coal ash into a garden you just don't know what you are putting there.
You might recall the TVA disaster of a couple of years ago when their on-site "storage" of fly ash washed into a river. The clean up was uber-expensive and the ash had to be hauled away to a landfill that could take fly ash. NS ran shuttle trains for the better part of a year to move this stuff.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
John WR Coal ash is not recommended for vegetable gardens. The problem is that you don't know what is in it. Coal contains trace elements and the kinds of elements and concentration vary from coal seam to coal seam. The trace elements may only be in very small amounts, similar to amounts already in soil. Plants actually need trace elements and that can well explain why coal ash can work so well as a fertilizer. However, it can contain heavy metals such as cadmium and lead. Unless you are prepared to do a chemical analysis if you put coal ash into a garden you just don't know what you are putting there.
That is mentioned in some of the articles in the link I supplied not to long ago.
Do they transport this fly ash in hoppers or coal cars? There is several coal fired power plants in my are and I have never seen any cars except full and empty coal cars.
My guess would be the ash, being so light, would be easier to just take by truck to a landfill or something. I imagine it would take a lot of coal to create one hopper car of ash.
To John WR: Coal ash in the garden is kind of a moot point now anyway, there's probably no-one using coal furnaces anymore. At any rate, my father's 84 now, his sister, my aunt is 86. Eating coal-fertlized veggies didn't seem to hurt them at all. Or maybe it was because Grandma and Grandpa burned anthracite?
Here in Western Pa they like to use abandoned strip mines as dump sites for fly ash. As there are many of these around here, some times within "rock throwin" distance of the plant, most of the ash is moved by truck. I know of one company that does nothing but move fly ash. They have their trucks permitted for 100K lb, so it seems that fly ash isn't as light as is commonly thought. I know of one power plant that moves their fly ash with rock trucks to a former strip mine about a mile on the other side of NS's main line. The ash is still damp from the scrubbers, so it stacks on the trucks very high, they look rather like a house going down the road!
Tim
Rikers Yard Here in Western Pa they like to use abandoned strip mines as dump sites for fly ash. As there are many of these around here, some times within "rock throwin" distance of the plant, most of the ash is moved by truck. I know of one company that does nothing but move fly ash. They have their trucks permitted for 100K lb, so it seems that fly ash isn't as light as is commonly thought. I know of one power plant that moves their fly ash with rock trucks to a former strip mine about a mile on the other side of NS's main line. The ash is still damp from the scrubbers, so it stacks on the trucks very high, they look rather like a house going down the road! Tim
That's not fly ash. Fly ash is removed from the stack gas stream and is finer than talcum powder. If you carried it in a open truck half would be gone in a few miles. Fly ash is sent to cement plants in covered hoppers or tanks with conical bottoms. The ash that is buried in pits is heavier, granular, and not as subject to becoming wind borne.
beaulieu "...There are carloads of Fly Ash from some powerplants, one common use is to make high-carbon concrete, used in highway surfaces to slow abrasion. There was a recent movement of three solid trainloads of Fly Ash from the Martin Lake Powerplant in Texas to a customer near Rosemount, MN. I didn't hear what it was going to be used for..."
"...There are carloads of Fly Ash from some powerplants, one common use is to make high-carbon concrete, used in highway surfaces to slow abrasion. There was a recent movement of three solid trainloads of Fly Ash from the Martin Lake Powerplant in Texas to a customer near Rosemount, MN. I didn't hear what it was going to be used for..."
To add to what Beaulieu noted:
Several years back I was working in the Transit-mix concrete business in SE Kansas, (about 5years back). Our company was experimenting with fly ash mixed in to our concrete. They were hauling it from a coal fired power plant in Riverdale, Kansas in pneumatic tankers ( had been dried) and it was used to effect the ratio of cement in a batch ( fly was used in the mix with Portland cement).
The net result was a reduction of Portland ( at that time Portland was in short supply- read pricey). It did seem to require more water to get the slump to correct standards( too much fly ash, and the mix looked like the contents of a baby's diaper with the 'runs' !) . We were told that the correct ratio of cement and flyash made a stronger end product that was denser and set faster.
Since those times Concrete users have adjusted their formulations and fly ash has become more accepted in the end products. Here is a current link with more explanations:
http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2009/1/29/Using-Fly-Ash-in-Concrete/
FTA:"... Long before the invention of portland cement, the Romans created impressive concrete structures using lime and a volcanic ash (with properties that were first discovered in Pozzuoli, Italy) that reacted with the lime and hardened the concrete. Coal fly ash, which is the particulate matter collected by pollution-control equipment from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants, has a similar pozzolanic effect because of its silica and alumina content."
Don't know if it is currently accepted for use in railroad ordered concrete products; maybe Paul North or Mud Chicken or some others around here would be better qualified to address that area.
Rikers Yard I know of one company that does nothing but move fly ash. They have their trucks permitted for 100K lb, so it seems that fly ash isn't as light as is commonly thought.
I know of one company that does nothing but move fly ash. They have their trucks permitted for 100K lb, so it seems that fly ash isn't as light as is commonly thought.
So which weighs more, 100,000 lbs of ash, or 100,000 lbs of coal??
I think the point is that you'd probably have to burn a LOT of coal to create 100K lbs of ash to fill the truck with.
wjstix Rikers Yard I know of one company that does nothing but move fly ash. They have their trucks permitted for 100K lb, so it seems that fly ash isn't as light as is commonly thought. So which weighs more, 100,000 lbs of ash, or 100,000 lbs of coal?? I think the point is that you'd probably have to burn a LOT of coal to create 100K lbs of ash to fill the truck with.
The real question is - Which occupies the greater cubic area?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
We unloaded synthetic latex beside the silos where they loaded the rock trucks, so I went and watched. This ash was fine as all-purpose flower. It was also damp enough to make a lump when squeezed in my hand. The trip to the dump was less than a mile, uphill. The top speed for the rock trucks was that of a brisk walk and some ash did fall off. A road sweeper made rounds to keep it off the road. If it wasn't fly ash it wasn't far from it, the unload-er and his helper said it was so I took him at his word. Perhaps it was being used as a generic term for all the ash comming out of the plant. There sure was a lot of it.
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