Coal pipelines are pipelines used to transport

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

from where it is mined to where it is consumed. For very short distances, large trucks are used to transport coal, but

train In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often ...

s and

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels ...

s are preferred for long distances. In some cases it is more economical to move the coal by pipeline than by train or barge. This can happen when there is no suitable

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

waterway A waterway is any navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other languages. A first distinction is necessary b ...

to transport the coal, or when it must be moved very long distances. There are two types of coal pipelines, slurry and log. Slurry pipelines use a slurry of

water Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...

and

pulverized coal Coal dust is a fine powdered form of which is created by the crushing, grinding, or pulverizing of coal. Because of the brittle nature of coal, coal dust can be created during mining, transportation, or by mechanically handling coal. It is a form ...

. The ratio of coal to water is about 1 to 1 by weight. Coal log pipelines use coal that has been compressed into logs with a diameter 5 to 10% less than the diameter of the pipeline and a length about twice the diameter of the pipeline.Hydraulic Transport of Coal in Combination With Oil Granulation / V.Biletsky // 8th International Conference on “Transport and Sedimentation of Solid Particles” 24–26 January 1995, Pragye, Czech Republic. D6-1 – D6-11. The ratio of coal to water is about 3 or 4 to 1. Coal needs a very low moisture content before it can be burned efficiently, so the

must be dried after it arrives at the

coal power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...

. Coal transported as slurry requires a lot of drying and

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...

generation will be substantially less if it is not dried effectively. Coal logs do not require as much drying because they are tightly packed so they do not absorb much water, and any water originally in the coal is squeezed out during compression. To dry the coal, the water is evaporated or separated in a

centrifuge A centrifuge is a device that uses centrifugal force to separate various components of a fluid. This is achieved by spinning the fluid at high speed within a container, thereby separating fluids of different densities (e.g. cream from milk) or ...

. Large coal power plants use large amounts of coal each day; enough to fill a hundred train coal cars carrying each. Water used to transport the coal is likewise significant, particularly in

arid A region is arid when it severely lacks available water, to the extent of hindering or preventing the growth and development of plant and animal life. Regions with arid climates tend to lack vegetation and are called xeric or desertic. Most ...

regions like the Southwestern United States. Such a power plant would use about with a coal slurry pipeline or about with a coal log pipeline. This amounts to about per year respectively. The Mohave Generating Station in

Laughlin, Nevada Laughlin is an unincorporated resort town and census-designated place in Clark County, Nevada, United States. It is located on the Colorado River, directly across from the much larger Bullhead City, Arizona. Laughlin lies south of Las Vegas, in ...

had the longest coal slurry pipeline in the world at . From 1969 until 2005, the pipeline used of water per year to carry about of coal to the plant from the Black Mesa Mine in the northeastern corner of

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

. The plant was shut down on December 31, 2005 because the controversial coal and water supply terms were being renegotiated.

References

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External links

Coal Log Fuel Pipeline Transportation System
(PDF)
‘Two scenarios' for facility's future

Pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

Power station technology Pipeline transport

See also

References

External links