Oil Tank House (Update)

Chris_82

It kind of snowballs, the fire dept. looks at the health inspector, who looks at the next guy in line...It's a pretty rotten procedure to live thru and yes everyone takes the I don't know but lets be sure track. What is really entertaining heere in MA is when the (USCG) Coast Guard gets involved when your in the middle of the state! The poor man...

Unknown

If you remember,,,,,,,,,

I posted some pics a few weeks back, anyway here`s where things stand now! I can actually walk under-it and I`m 5`11", I sure feel sorry for the HO! This is what a leaky oil tank can cause!

Dave

John@Reliable_14

Well it could be worst...........

if it was a gas leak, O'never mind hehehe

Unknown

Heard that John,,,,,,,,,,

"apparently" the insurance co. offered the guy a "new house" but he refused, he`s in his 80`s!! If it were mine,,,,,,,,goodbye!!!!!!!!

Dave

Leo

But in your professional opinion

When in your professional opinion you advise them to upgrade the tank you get 101 reasons why it isn't needed even from other professionals.

Leo

Unknown

Leo,,,,,,,,,

Don`t get me wrong, I`m "NOT-DEFENDING" an oil-tank problem, I`m just showing what this guy`s going through! PS- Yes, I agree with your scenario!

Dave

Perry_3

Several comments pop into my head

1) At least now he can get a proper new basement - complete with insulation to boost his energy efficiency.

2) Coal never had this problem; all you had to do was clean up the coal dust and dispose of the ash.

3) I agree with the issue of gas leaks. One of the reasons I looked so hard at geothermal... I've never seen a house blown up by an electrical leak... (or a coal or oil leak).

I wish him the best. I do hope the insurance company is covering all (or virutally all) of the cost.

Perry

Leo

I could be wrong

It is my understandig coal leaves arsenic in the ground. I could be wrong, it may be one of the other poisons. I work with oil and am pro oil but I am hopefully perceptive enought to realize every fuel has it's dangers.

Leo

Leo

Dave

I'm sorry if it looked like I was pointing a finger at you, I wasn't. My statement was intended to be a broad statement as it is a very broad ie common problem.

Leo

Unknown

Thanks Leo,,,,,

I agree!

Dave

Perry_3

Never heard of an arsnic problem with coal.

I have heard of a lot of problems with coal (and dealt with many of them working at coal fired power plants) - but never heard of arsnic being one of them.

Might there be a trace of it in coal. Perhaps. But lots of other things are there as well. Sulfer which is a key component of the worst acid rain, and mercury are the biggest two pollutants that are being controlled or are being intended to be controlled.

Interesting side note: something like 1/3 of all mercury in the atmosphere is from china buring its coal in its power plants. The coal in china has a huge amount of mercury in it. Another 1/3 is from coal and some other stuff that is burned in rest of the world; and 1/3 is naturaly there.

Perry

Unknown

Perry,

who knows for sure what`s going-on? We can`t smoke anymore, noise pollution, asbestos is taboo, etc., but we can still drive our cars until someone "outlaws that",,,,,,everything causes cancer, but one thing is a fact, no-one lives forever! Who knows if the "coal dust" or "ashes" of 50 years ago, create death! But life goes-on, it has to.

Dave

Timco

Soo....is this a Canadian thing to just keep raising the house until it is a safe distance from the contaminated soil? He will need quite a stairway soon!

Tim

Unknown

Tim,,,,,,,,,,

Your always a "blast",,,,,,,,I was wondering where you were?
BTW, you gotta Email me, computer "crashed" and I lost everything!

Dave

Maine Doug_58

Funny you should mention

driving cars. Depending on the last couple of days, vehicle related deaths are at 44,000 for this year. I think this is the highest cause of death for the under 33 age group.
Coal dust would appear to be very safe in comparison.

Unknown

Main Doug,

I`m sure that`ll be a new "branch"of our government, right beside the Ministry Of Silly Walks! LOL!!

Dave

Perry_3

Coal Ash - interesting stuff...

OK Coal is composed largly of carbon, with smaller amounts of other things.

While there is a range of types of coal - the kinds of coal burned in power plants (and used to make coke for the steel industry) typically has between 1% to 5% by weight sulfer - and then there can be quite the range of other things in the coal.

When coal is burned not only the carbon burns but a range of other things burns up as well (including the sulfer). leaving ash residues.

The heaviest ash falls to the bottom of the boiler (called bottom ash). The lightest ash goes out with the exhaust gases and heads towards the stack (called flyash).

Most plants these days have filtering systems of some kind to collect 95% or better of the flyash - and they might have other systems intended to capture other "burned" components (such as a sulfer dioxide "scrubber").

Now bottom ash and flyash is really interesting stuff...

If you applied "normal" hazardoes waste classifications under RCRA (or something like that) it would be considered nasty stuff... However, flyash and bottom ash has been specifically declared by congress to be "non-hazardous" as it was an existing item of commercial use.

Most bottom ash can be used as road fill (and it works really great). However much of the bottom ash is landfilled in specific ash pits.

Flyash is typically added to concrete. It reduces the amount of cement needed - and makes a stronger concrete than a pure cememt based concrete. Most power plants can sell all of the flyash they produce; which limits the quantitiy that needs to be landfilled.

In many cases the ash produced is about 1% or more by weight of the original coal (so a modest size coal power plant burning 5000 tons of coal a day would be producing a minimum of 50 tons of ash a day: Note it would take a about a 18,000 tons of coal per day power plant to equal the power output of the nuclear plant I work at). This ash contains all the heavy metal stuff that was in the coal, and flyash tends to contain a lot of alumina.

The biggest health problem from flyash is that very small particles from pulverized coal furnaces (the coal is ground to talcum powder consistency and then blown into the furnace and burned) can penetrate very deeply into the lungs (particles below 10 microns in size). Larger particles are routinely rejected by the lungs.

Interestingly enough - there has actually been talk of mining the ash pits to recover certain elements becasue the ash has a higher concentration than the easily accessable ores for those metals. The biggest interest is in recovering uranium. So who knows. It just might be that future nuclear power plants will be powered from mining the ash pits from old coal fired power plants as the fraction of a percent of uranium that was in caol has now been concentrated into the bottom ash to economically recoverable concentrations (especicially as all these ash pits are on the surface and could just be scooped up with big endloaders).

How dangerous is the ash?.... Lots of people have been exposed to lots of the ash. There are few if any apparent long term health effects - except for the 10 micron or less particle sizes. It has been 20 years since I was current in the research on PM10 (Particlulate Matter 10 Micons) and I do not know exactly what causes the biggest health effects from those particles. It might well be the natural radiotive elements that are the real problems (ingested radionuclides tend to be much more harmfull than even a fairly massive amount of radiation from external sources).

It'l be interesting to watch the future...

Oh, yeh. Coal plants emit more radiation up the stack than an equivelent nuclear plant - a lot more, month after month, year after year (but since they are not "nuclear" plants they don't have to track and report it - and people don't worry about it.

Oh... If you hear about some studies that show the "radiation induced health effects" of living downwind from nuclear plants... Why don't people living downwind of coal plants - that are emmiting 50 - 100 times the radiation have any similar "radiation induced" health effects? A man's gotta wonder?

Perry

Maine Doug_58

Given a choice

I would rather live next to a nuke plant then a coal power plant. Having a chemist, a biologist and a physics guy (2005 Nobel nomonee) in the family

awaltiii

Arsenic In Coal Ash

I worked testing utility boilers for 20 years and have had to sometimes sign releases indicating I was aware the ash contained arsenic. When a coal fired boiler is designed, the customer is first asked where they will get their fuel from and after test burning the fuel, the boiler will be designed to that fuel.

Perry stated the ash come from 2 locations in the boiler... bottom ash and fly ash. The bottom ash is generally heavier because when it is fly ash it may fuse with other fly ash particles in the furnace and drop down to become bottom ash. Ususally, the main source for bottom ash is slag running down the waterwalls. The slag is generated by the fly ash fusing to itself and the waterwalls and basically running down the walls like lava.

One pollutant that was not mentioned is NOx (oxides of nitrogen - NO & NO2). It is not to say the other emissions from the stack are not important, but most of the pollution control effort has been in the NOx catagory. Scrubbers take care of primarily SO2 and some particulate after the flue gas leaves the precipitator.

Most people do not understand the quantities of coal, oil, or gas involved to generate electricity on an industrial scale. The average 600 megawatt plant today will burn arou8nd 300 to 400 tons of coal per hour (100 tone is one railroad car load) depending on the BTU content of the coal. If the plant burned natural gas, it would consume about 6,000,000 cubic feet per hour. And if oil was the fuel, it would burn between 50,000 to 60,000 gallons per hour.

I have also been at plants where they sell the ash (all of it) for $1.50 (per pound) for the vanadium that is in the ash.

If my memory serves me corectly, one uranium pellet for a nuclear reactor is equal in energy value to almost 200 pounds of coal

Perry_3

Slagging ash is not that common.

You are correct that some coal fired boilers do in fact produce a slag - and that the slag can run down the waterwalls to the bottom ash pit.

That is actually somewhat or a rarity - and is limited to certain coals where the content of the ash make them melting and sticky at low temperatures.

I have never seen a power plant boiler that operated with slagging ash (and I have been in a lot of power plants in the midwest and the eastern US). I have seen a paper mill boiler that operated with slagging ash. Paper mill boilers are typically 1/20 - 1/10 the size of power boilers.

The energy equivelence of a typical uranium fuel pellet is equivelent to about 2000 Lb of coal (or 1 ton of coal), and vaires because different types of coal have different Btu/Lb values. A fuel pellet is equal to about 150 gallons of fuel oil for a better comparison, or about 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas.

You are correct in that certain types of coal can have other elements in high enough concentration to warrant extraction. While I had not heard of the sale of the ash for vanadium - it does not surprise me. Coal varies a lot depending on which coal seam it is mined from based on the local conditons that formed the vegitation and provided other deposites to that area that the coal was made from.

Another product that can be sold is the "gypsum" residue from certain wet SO2 scrubbers (and certain types of coal being burned). It can be made into wallboard (and is made into wallboard). At one time it was thought this was a great future for power plants - until someone calculated that only 3 or 4 large power plants (and there are many hundreds of them) would be needed to supply all the wallboard used in north america. Given that shipping cost money - there are a few strategecally located power plants / wall board plants in the US.

Coal ash is such an amazing item... It contains lots of stuff. I have no doubt that it contains some arsnic. It can't be much though - otherwise the power plant workers would have been poisened long ago.

I note that one of the more interesting coal ash situations I worked with involved coal ash with a "free swelling index" greater than 1 (actually 2 or 3). The ash - by volumn was larger than the coal volumn (most coal ash is 10% or less than the original coal by volumn). We called it "popcorn" coal. Light and fluffy - but needed a very very large ash handling system...

NOx control is not unique to coal furnaces - and all natural gas, fuel oil, wood, waste, and coal boilers have been retrofitted (or now designed) with low NOx burners. Scrubbing for NOx is difficult and I believe that it is still largely in the experimental stage (I'm a few years out of fossil plants though). Combustion turbines have also been retrofitted with low NOx burners.

The best control of a lot of coal pollutants is by using fluidized bed boilers. However, they seem to have size limitations; and all the new large power plant boilers (400 MW +) are being constructed with old fashion pulverized coal. Baghouses typically are built instead of percipitators - they work better with less maintenance - and allow future fuel flexibility.

Coal gasification is considered experimental and costly yet; and the one state public service commission to consider new coal fired power plants rejected a coal gassification unit as too costly and too experimental (the utility did propose a 500 - 600 MW coal gassification power plant unit).


Perry

awaltiii

Slagging ash is not that common.

> You are correct that some coal fired boilers do

> in fact produce a slag - and that the slag can

> run down the waterwalls to the bottom ash

> pit.

>

> That is actually somewhat or a rarity -

> and is limited to certain coals where the content

> of the ash make them melting and sticky at low

> temperatures.

>

> I have never seen a power plant

> boiler that operated with slagging ash (and I

> have been in a lot of power plants in the midwest

> and the eastern US). I have seen a paper mill

> boiler that operated with slagging ash. Paper

> mill boilers are typically 1/20 - 1/10 the size

> of power boilers.

>

> The energy equivelence of a

> typical uranium fuel pellet is equivelent to

> about 2000 Lb of coal (or 1 ton of coal), and

> vaires because different types of coal have

> different Btu/Lb values. A fuel pellet is equal

> to about 150 gallons of fuel oil for a better

> comparison, or about 17,000 cubic feet of natural

> gas.

>

> You are correct in that certain types of

> coal can have other elements in high enough

> concentration to warrant extraction. While I had

> not heard of the sale of the ash for vanadium -

> it does not surprise me. Coal varies a lot

> depending on which coal seam it is mined from

> based on the local conditons that formed the

> vegitation and provided other deposites to that

> area that the coal was made from.

>

> Another

> product that can be sold is the "gypsum" residue

> from certain wet SO2 scrubbers (and certain types

> of coal being burned). It can be made into

> wallboard (and is made into wallboard). At one

> time it was thought this was a great future for

> power plants - until someone calculated that only

> 3 or 4 large power plants (and there are many

> hundreds of them) would be needed to supply all

> the wallboard used in north america. Given that

> shipping cost money - there are a few

> strategecally located power plants / wall board

> plants in the US.

>

> Coal ash is such an amazing

> item... It contains lots of stuff. I have no

> doubt that it contains some arsnic. It can't be

> much though - otherwise the power plant workers

> would have been poisened long ago.

>

> I note that

> one of the more interesting coal ash situations I

> worked with involved coal ash with a "free

> swelling index" greater than 1 (actually 2 or 3).

> The ash - by volumn was larger than the coal

> volumn (most coal ash is 10% or less than the

> original coal by volumn). We called it "popcorn"

> coal. Light and fluffy - but needed a very very

> large ash handling system...

>

> NOx control is

> not unique to coal furnaces - and all natural

> gas, fuel oil, wood, waste, and coal boilers have

> been retrofitted (or now designed) with low NOx

> burners. Scrubbing for NOx is difficult and I

> believe that it is still largely in the

> experimental stage (I'm a few years out of fossil

> plants though). Combustion turbines have also

> been retrofitted with low NOx burners.

>

> The

> best control of a lot of coal pollutants is by

> using fluidized bed boilers. However, they seem

> to have size limitations; and all the new large

> power plant boilers (400 MW +) are being

> constructed with old fashion pulverized coal.

> Baghouses typically are built instead of

> percipitators - they work better with less

> maintenance - and allow future fuel

> flexibility.

>

> Coal gasification is considered

> experimental and costly yet; and the one state

> public service commission to consider new coal

> fired power plants rejected a coal gassification

> unit as too costly and too experimental (the

> utility did propose a 500 - 600 MW coal

> gassification power plant unit).

>

> Perry



Perry,

CFB (Circulating Fluidized Bed) boilers are becoming more common and increasing in size. Their ability to burn "low quality" fuels and their low combustion temperatures (1600° F)make them ideal for many applications in the utility industry. Especially when NOx and SO2 control is a major factor when not wanting to build a scrubber system.

The small size issue for CFB boilers is still a concern. But they are now approaching the 250 MW range. There are some new ideas currently in the R&D area that will hopefully make CFB boilers cheaper to build and maintain.

On the slagging ash issue... I have been to units where the slag is 3" think. An extreme case, but there is always some slag on the walls. Another source for the bottom ash is the "clinkers" which can grow large enough to knock out the bottom of a boiler (it happened in China when they weren't running the sootblowers as needed).

As I look back to my work in the field days. I always appreciated a nice clean gas fired unit. The were somewhat rare in my field days as compared to today with gas conversions replacing oil and coal fired units.

It is nice to be able to talk to someone who has been in the industry.

awaltiii

Slagging ash is not that common.

Perry,

CFB (Circulating Fluidized Bed) boilers are becoming more common and increasing in size. Their ability to burn "low quality" fuels and their low combustion temperatures (1600° F)make them ideal for many applications in the utility industry. Especially when NOx and SO2 control is a major factor when not wanting to build a scrubber system.

The small size issue for CFB boilers is still a concern. But they are now approaching the 250 MW range. There are some new ideas currently in the R&D area that will hopefully make CFB boilers cheaper to build and maintain.

On the slagging ash issue... I have been to units where the slag is 3" think. An extreme case, but there is always some slag on the walls. Another source for the bottom ash is the "clinkers" which can grow large enough to knock out the bottom of a boiler (it happened in China when they weren't running the sootblowers as needed).

As I look back to my work in the field days. I always appreciated a nice clean gas fired unit. The were somewhat rare in my field days as compared to today with gas conversions replacing oil and coal fired units.

It is nice to be able to talk to someone who has been in the industry.

Perry_3

You are confusing slag with what I call \"slagging ash\"

Yes, it is nice to talk to someone who understands.

I believe we have been talking about several different things.

Bottom ash is a fine particluate ash - not clumps. It is the remains of the heavier elements and drop out when burned in a pulverized coal furnace (the industry standard for large power plant boilers).

Slagging ash - as you initially described it - and as I have seen it (or what I was talking about) was ash that had a low melting temperature and would stick to the tubes (water tubed furnaces), congeal into a mollasas consistency at boiler temperatures and run down the walls into the water pit. Once cooled in the water pit it is broken up and disposed of in aproximately gravel sized chunks. As I said before - quite rare, but it does exist.

Your latest post is talking about "slag clinkers". Yes it often forms in different parts of many boilers. usually it is blased off (sometimes with explosives) and large chunks fall into the bottom ash pits. It is usally manually removed when the boiler is shut down.

Should a clinker fall off while the boiler is running they have been known to punch holes in tubes in some cases. Clinkers can also plug up the normal bottom ash removal system and have to be manually broken up and removed or manually pushed away from the ash inlet (either job is usually "lots" of fun).

You are also correct that soot blowers - and airhorns - can prevent the formation of larger slag clinkers. More often they just knock loose the soot on the tubes to keep heat transfer up.

I agree that fluidized bed boilers do offer advantages for boilers of a certain size. The problem is that most main power plants are well above that size. If you want to build a 500 - 1000 MW power plant you do not build a series of fluidized bed boilers. You build a large single pulverized coal boiler. There are 3 or 4 of these under construction in my state right now (the first of the large power stations to be built in about 20 years, and over 100 other ones are on the drawing boards).

Have a great day,

Perry

Cosmo_3

broads? where?????

Here I thought Leo said that broads might have been the common problem.....

hee hee


Cosmo

Mike Barth

This is overkill!!!

How much oil actually leaked? I believe in protecting the enviroment, but is all that really necessary? I've delt with the PA DEP on an oil spill at my business and although they did make me remove 24 tons of contaminated soil I had the impression that they were just making me do it to make the neighbors feel like we were doig something. In fact the one DEP guy said if he could have kept the regional guy away we would have only had to remove the oil from the creek. All reasonable attempts should be made to clean up a spill but jacking up a house! Give me a break! That being said I do not know all the details of this incident.

Perry_3

Depends on the state... & the worst oil spill I've seen

Some states want all contaiminated soil removed - or remediated. Others don't care so much.

Most expensive oil spill I've ever seen....

Many years ago we were closing a small municipal power plant. It had oil backup for one of the small boilers; and we had about a 150,000 gallon oil tank (above ground in a berm).

Time to empty the tank. I sold the oil to a company that would pump it into tanker trucks and haul it away.

One day one of the plant workers says... "Is that oils suspossed to be spraying like that" - as a 6" diameter stream of fuel oil is shooting about 15 feet in a nice arc... well away from the truck and well outside the berm. The truckdriver was in the cab with his head down.

I ran out their yelling my head off and the truck driver suddenly jerked his head up, got out of the cab, noticed the problem, and turned the pump off.

The oil; about 1000 gallons of it, went into our nice newly expanded and rebuilt electrical substation for 1/2 of the city...

The utility had just spent many millions on it, complete with a new control building, all new cabling (and control cabling) buried nicly in sand filled treaches. It had literally just gone operational a few weeks earlier after about 5 months of work.

The oil ran under the brand new substation control building and got into those cable treanches. Then it ran down the old conduited trench to another older substation on the other side of a set of railroad tracks (which had not been touched by the expansion and rebuild of the main substation).

The emergency response person for the oil companies insurance company showed up, and after we started digging arround the control building, and then into the cable trenches and pulling up live new cables in the treanches to investigate how far the oil got. He then called his company (from my phone), asked for the Vice President and told them that he had responded to an oil spill, and that this was going to be an "open checkbook project." He then told them that the oil spill was in a brand new utility electrical substation and he did not even know where to start estimating the cost of cleanup and remediation.

You can bet that the line department and the major utility that had helped us with that substation project was mighty pleased that all of their new cables - on a now operational substation had to be dug up and cleaned or replaced - and that their new control building was sitting on some of the most contaminated sand (the oil puddled against the building and seeped under it to get to the cable treanches.

At least with the shutdown of the plant we were not going to need those railroad tracks again... so they could be removed to more easily get to the conduit and cables that was run under it (which was the deepest part of the cable trenches and the oil wasted no time getting there).

What a mess. I never did hear what it cost to cleanup and repair/rebuild the substation. But the nice sand that new buildings are built on, and that is used to lay, and then cover, substation cables in the cable trenches sure can allow fuel oil to get everywhere (and the gravel on the ground above it dosn't stop much oil either).

The truckdriver was fired; and all the remaining trucks had two people on them to ensure that the oil was safely pumped from the tank to the trucks.

This house project looks simple in comparison to that.

Perry

Unknown

I agree Perry,

your story tells of a terrible mess that I`m glad was cleaned-up,,, and 2 "wrongs" never make a "right",,,but on the other hand,, don`t you think "targeting" 1 house out of 10`s of 1000`s located along "old railway lines" for this kind of cleanup is extreme? We`re not talking about the Exxon Valdez here. The tank was above-ground horizontal, 200 Imp.Gal.or (909 liters), pardon my French. Knowing these people as I do, (neighbors), no more than 2-4 liters (if that) leaked! No "freak" spill.

Dave

Wayco Wayne_2

I wonder

how many ACH he has for infiltration? WW

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