Clean Coal – The Flipside

The goal to bring environmentally friendly energy such as natural gas and nuclear power in the wake of existing coal burning facilities, could have serious consequences to industries that rely on coal driven by products. What, you mean that other industries use coal by products? I thought the coal is the enemy of the state, only used by fascist-communist driven uber capitalist oligarchs, who rape, pillage and plunder our natural wonders at the behest of corporate profiteering.

Over 60% of power in this country is powered by coal. As a result this provides quite a bit of coal ash, that is highly toxic and can wreak havoc if it leaches into water tables or rivers. Fortunately 43% of this by product has been put to work as a useful raw material in other manufacturing sectors – for Concrete this is Flyash and Slag.  Our industries reliance on these materials as a standard prescription in properly designed concrete can not be overlooked. Large scale projects (Freedom Tower) and government agencies (Caltrans) all mandate the use of fully sustainable, eco friendly materials combined with reduction of carbon intensive ingredients such as Portland Cement.  So what happens to these materials as the reduction of coal burning plants get moth-balled?  That’s subject to much debate as this is process is fluid and our current reliance on coal will have to be dealt with gracefully, if at all seeing that other alternatives are not necessarily benign (see Chernobyl) and other eco-friendly alternatives prove costly.

Roughly 8 million metric tonnes for fly ash is used in the manufacture of Ready Mix Concrete per year in this country.  If that were substituted with traditional Portland Cement that would equal the same amount of tons of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere per year. This not a zero sum game.  Although material derivatives should not be the sole basis for how our country deals with sources of renewable energy and our policies of dealing with global warming, they most certainly need to be understood holistically.  Cap and trade based policies and pie in the sky energy endeavors such as nitrogen and bio fuel, have extensive costs that ultimately will impact consumers. That’s nothing that Greenpeace, Sierra Club or the Democrats are worried about, but you should. Clean coal may be an oxymoron, but I think zero based emission policies for energy are as well.  FutureGen the DOE’s answer to clean coal’s with zero based emission using carbon capturing technology is obviously less evasive and less disruptive to sourcing coal based on pozolans.

Queensland Fire

This just in from Hymix plant at West End – great Australian smokeout. This is what 240volts will do to the inside of our batch system when it arcs. Not good, although Dave Campbell from All Plant was able to get the plant back up in running within about a ten-hour period.

Not too bad.

J - Box Fire

Trip to Gympie – QSD

Well I’ll tell you, Aussies know how to do it right!  Recent trip down under to Gympie (Integra) was a real eye opener on the difference in the way plants are co

nstructed. This thing is a monster of a plant for the area.  It’s got a capacity to produce about 280 cm3 / hr. Not too bad for a “country plant”.

I heard a statistic that over 1500 people are moving into Queensland Australia per month from Southern Australia and New South Wales.  Not a bad growth market in a down economy.

Gympie plant designed by DL Forbes

The Ecomony…Smart?

There’s a lot of speculation on what may or may not come as a result of the stimulus package in the realm of a much needed bailout for the concrete industry.  We’ve heard a lot about the ever-changing TARP program brought to you by Bernanke, Paulsen and Co and now Obama has his shot.   I remember when Bill Clinton ran for the  presidency back in 1992.  Back then I remember the slogan …It’s the Ecomomy…Stupid! as the rallying cry Clinton used to solidify his campaign.  Although I always thought that was a term used to sling mud at then Presdident George H.W. Bush on his own defunct economic policies, little did I know that this slogan was actually devised by James Carville, his campaign manager,  as a means to keep Clinton (a detailed policy wonk) focused on the one thing that he could beat his opponent…the economy.

Although Obama, does not have the same struggles against an incumbant President whose foreign policy has poised much threat and trepidation as Clinton, the ecomony is back in the forefront of everyone’s mind. It was during the election and certainly during the fist 150 days of office. We will truly see if this is the ecomomy smart or the economy stupid. My understanding is that the government tends to be the problem rather than the solution.  Here’s an interesting article from BW on constrction’s reliance on the upcoming stimulus package Stimulus – Bring It On.