Coal Impoundment Area! Catchment Pond, Coal Slurry!
Coal Impoundment Area! Have a Look!
A coal slurry impoundment consists of solid and liquid waste and is a by-product of the coal mining and preparation processes.
Mining generates enormous amounts of solid waste in the form of rocks and dirt. This refuse is used to dam the opening of a hollow between adjacent mountains.
After the dam is built, the void behind it is typically filled with millions of gallons of waste slurry from a coal preparation plant. This impounded liquid waste can sometimes total billions of gallons in a single facility.
I have been at a drill site next to an coal impoundment area for some time. It’s December and we had lot of snow! It looks beautiful but makes the drilling really difficult specially in the morning if you have frozen water in “water trucks”! Anyways, it has been a great experience as I had a chance to look at the coal alurry i mpoundment area very closely. “Impoundment” area just means a place where the mining companies dump their waste. In our case it is coal waste which may include bone, shale, dark shale, clay, coal dust, some mining parts and so on. The whole impoundment area looks just black just because of too much of coal dust in it. Once I was there during a rain event. I was just black slurry coming down as small springs from the impoundment area. They had “catchment ponds” which are built to catch the black slurry before it gets to the river at the foot of the hill.
Just go through the series of the pictures and you will sort of realize what actually goes with the impoundment areas!! Hope you enjoy the post!
Drilling with snow!
The Coal waste is generated at the coal preparation plant.
Conveyor Belt Brings the coal to the Coal Impoundment Area.
The Coal is dumped as a pile at the impoundment area using the conveyor belt. Large Bull Dozers spread the pile of waste materials over the impoundment area.
Here is the Bull Dozer Spreading the coal over the impoundment area.
Catchment Ponds are built to catch black slurry coming down via springs after storm events. You can see how black the water in the pond is!
I have two more videos too:
1. Black water coming down from the catchment area after storm event!
2. Bull Dozer in Action Video: I feel bad for the poor guy. His job is to spread the coal waste over the impoundment area all day and everyday!
