The dewatering plant was used to process material from the former coal fired power plant and remove the water for proper transportation and eventual removal of the material. This facility has the largest drum filters ever built in the country. The facility was built less than 5 years ago. This facility has the potential to be re-utilized for new industry and new processes. Utilizing the existing facility can create cost savings for industry looking to build a similar process.
The pug mills are rated for a max throughput of 626 ton/hr. This can accommodate 2 or 3 drum filters feeding a single pug mill. The system also has three large tanks, all three Tanks are the same size 50’ high by 60’ wide, with a capacity of 1033006 gallons. Maximum design height is 49 feet with a temperature of 140 degrees down to – 18F degrees. Tanks were completed in 2015 when system was placed in service.
The main process for dewatering the CCBs are the Vacuum Drum Filters (VDF). The underflow from the thickeners will be sent to the filter feed tank and then pumped to the VDFs. Each VDF has a dedicated liquid ring vacuum pump. The filter cake from the VDF drops onto a conveyor system that can deliver the solids to one of two pug mills. The pug mills mix the dewatered CCB and paste from the paste thickener with crushed lime and dry fly ash from unit 3. The material is then conveyed to a barge or to the storage pad.
The system also has a Stacker and Barge Loading equipment. When the barge load system is unavailable, processed material can be placed on the storage pad using the stacker. The storage pad holds up to 37,000 tons of dewatered CCB material.? Material that has been placed on the storage pad will be reclaimed using mobile equipment. The feeder breaker consists of a hopper, conveyor, and dumper. The max reclaim rate for the feeder breaker is 1000 tph.
