Shuozhou City: China's developing circular economy

- Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province, China

The Asian Coal Ash Association, partnering with the Institute for Technical Information for the Building Materials Industry will host the 8th annual Coal Ash Asia conference this September 12-15. Coal Ash Asia consists of three days of oral presentations, trade and services exhibition, poster exhibition, scenic and industrial tours as well as multiple networking opportunities.

Shuozhou City produces approximately 8 million tons of fly ash and 1.8 million tons of gypsum each year, and disposes of nearly 5 million tons each year into landfill.  Spreading over 145, 000 acres, China’s premier coal ash industrial park is located next to a large coal ash reservoir and is key in the country’s development of circular economy.

There are almost one hundred of coal ash based products in the park, including:

·      Ultrafine Fly Ash,

·      Fly Ash Based Flooring

·      Fly Ash Based Furniture

·      Ceramic Fiber Cotton

·      Fly Ash Based Calcium Silicate Board

·      Aluminum oxide and Hydrated silica

·      Thistle board

·      Autoclaved Fly Ash Brick,

·      Autoclaved Aerated Concrete Blocks,

·      Gypsum Based Dry Mix Mortar,

·      Lightweight Wallboard

·      Cement

·      Concrete

·      And more!

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Included in the guide is an overview of operations including the park’s R&D center, a collaborative effort of Peking University and the local Shuozhou government. With a combination of advanced technology, excellent equipment and innovative talents, the R&D center focuses on the development of new technologies and new products for enterprises within the industrial park. The Center has developed many new technologies and products including: Ceramic tiles and fiber cotton, foam ceramics, catalyst carriers, high strength fibers, wall materials, refractory and heat insulating materials.

This September, all attendees will have the chance to go on an in depth tour of the Shuozhou Industrial Park, and speak with park researchers, operators and managers. The delegates will be accompanied by a team of translators to assist with this exchange.

Want to learn more about participation at Coal Ash Asia 2018?

Technological Advances in Coal Combustion Products and Emissions: Dry Extraction and Effective Utilization

Kolkata- India

In India the main source of fuel, as in the rest of the world, continues to be coal. Correspondingly, as research and innovation endure, coal combustion products continue to increase in utilization in a competitive world facing mineral shortages.

India is known to have some of the dirtiest coal in the world, with high ash outputs. According to the latest report of the Central Electricity authority, between April and September 2015, 132 thermal power plants (TPPs) of 58 Utility Companies having an installed capacity of 130,428 MW consumed 251.69 million tons of coal with an average ash content of 33.23%. This led to generation of 83.64 million tons of coal ash, out of which only 46.87 million tons (or 56.04%) was gainfully utilized.

The consensus in India, as well as China, another top consumer of coal is this: the infrastructure transformation from coal energy to newer energy including solar and wind will take at least three more decades to create. In the mean time, bridging the gap between generation and utilization of coal ash and cleaning coal before combustion continues to be the current agenda.

As coal ash is broken down into two parts, bottom ash that takes up approximately 20%, and fly ash, the more widely used fly ash at 80% of all ash output.

Current common wet extraction practices of bottom ash are now making way for newer dry practices where the cost and inefficiencies of having to dry the ash before use are no longer hindrances to change in infrastructure. Equipment manufacturers in India and China are beginning to implement new machinery that is able to extract, cool and convey the ash in a dry state. Systems like Magaldi’s MAC Ash Cooler, Qingdao Songling’s DAP Dry Ash Processor, Clyde Bergemann’s DRYCON , United Conveyor Corporation’s VAX Vibratory Ash Extraction, etc. are operational worldwide but with limited appearance in the Indian TPPs.

This year’s Asia-Pacific Conclave has therefore chosen the dry extraction and effective utilization of bottom ash as the primary focus area. The Conclave will take place March 17-18 in Kolkata, India. The Conclave will focus on the above mentioned topics as well as hazardous emissions. Legislation as recent as December 2015 in India is targeting the cleaning of coal through emissions. The notification states that as of January 2017, emission norms must be as follows :

Particulate Matter 30mg/Nm3; SO2 100mg/Nm3; NOx 100 mg/Nm3 and Hg 0.03mg/Nm3. In fact, the PM, SOx and NOx values in the new plants are prescribed to be substantially lower than the existing units, for which the PM, SOx and NOx limits are 100, 600 and 600 mg/Nm3 respectively.

The Conclave intends to deal with the best available technologies for emission control and lowering the amount of water required per megawatt of power generated.

AsianCAA will be bringing a delegation to support and help facilitate academic and commercial exchange at the upcoming Conclave.

Check out our upcoming events page to learn more!

China and Australian Coal Combustion Products Exchange: Millmerran Power Station and Independent Fly Ash Brokers

- Brisbane, Australia

A Chinese delegation including academics, power plant professionals and coal combustion product consumers traveled to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Cairns on a twelve day visit to Australia. The program, led by David Harris, Chairman of the Asian Coal Ash Association, and Bill Martin, senior partner with Coal Ash Solutions, included visits to key construction material and building material laboratories and production facilities.  The coal combustion products exchange took place from November 19th – 30th. 

The first stop on the tour was a visit to Millmerran Power Station and the co-located fly ash and bottom ash processing facility owned and operated by Independent Fly Ash Brokers. Millmerran Power Station, located just west of Brisbane, is a 1000-megawatt coal mine mouth power station, using pulverized coal and producing 3000 tons of coal ash per year. An introduction to the power station was provided by manager Joel Rickuss. The Chinese delegation observed an overview Millmerran, which is of one of the most cost efficient power stations in Australia. This is partly due to being located next to the coal mine. However, Millmerran also recycles the municipal waste water from the nearby city of Toowomba, piping the water to the station for use in their cooling system. The station does not use standard cooling towers, but a radiator system that proves to be very cost effective and resource efficient in a region of Australia where water conservation is a top priority. 

Bottom ash from the power station is being used for road base, improving the quality of roads for the coal mining operation. The fly ash is being collected by Independant Fly ash Brokers (IFB), a company jointly owned by three regional construction materials companies.  Due to the large distance from the markets, only 20-30% of the fly ash is being beneficially utilised. The rest is being used to backfill the coal mine.

The Chinese delegation noticed the difference in safety protocols and in the organization of the power station.

Independent Fly Ash Brokers is a joint venture between Wagners, Neilsens and Caldwells. IFB has a fly ash processing facility that is co-located with Millmerran. IFB pumps dry ash to their classifiers and silos pneumatically. The tour was given by Peter Dennis, IFB's operations manager.

The degree of automation at the IFB facility is impressive. After being pneumatically conveyed from the power station, fly ash is classified and then stored in hoppers, ready to discharge into pneumatic tanker trucks. Drivers of the tanker trucks pull into the loading bay, underneath the hopper outlet. The driver parks the truck and then goes to the operator deck to connect the discharge pipe from the hopper to the inlet on the truck storage tank. The hopper is on a gantry and - in the case of a double tanker truck - can be moved automatically by the truck driver from one tank to the next without moving the truck. The computer system indicates when the volume of ash has reached the tank capacity and automatically shuts off the discharge. 

All of this is done at a single loading control unit and is efficiently designed as trucks do not need to move from station to station. The whole loading process is operated by the truck driver, reducing labour costs and chances for human error. 

The delegation was very impressed by the degree of automation, cleanliness, organisation, and the factory design.

The next visit on our itinerary was to Wagner's Geoploymer. Wagner’s three trading divisions - Wagners Concrete, Quarries and Transport include cement, flyash and lime, reinforcing steel, on site concrete supply, contract crushing and bulk transport, as well as lightweight composite fibre products. Please view the next post in our post SACCP exchange series, for more information on that visit.