#2, 2017 West Virginia Mine Drainage Task Force Conference
Thank you West Virginia AMD Task Force!
It was with great pleasure that I was asked to present at the Joint AMD Task Force : Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative : American Society of Mining and Reclamation conference in Morgantown WV in April 2017. The conference was an amalgamation of our current research into low pH Fe oxidation, Mn fungal biooxidation, with a teaser of our semi-closed loop agricultural systems.
Presentation is Available Here: Metal Removal Units (Wetlands in a box)
We learned a lot at Task Force, searched out or stumbled upon new opportunities, and gave what I hope was a pretty fair presentation. I’d like to give a special shout out to all of the grad and undergrad students (many from St Francis U under Bill Strosnider) who presented posters and were awarded the recognition they richly earned and deserved.
On day four of the conference everyone had field trips to active or passive reclamation sites or the Longview Coal Electric Plant. I’ve been looking at rec sites for a few years now so I opted for the coal fired power plant. FGD or flue gas desulphurization treatment generates what is is basically AMD water, so we are looking into how our MRUs might be applied to recycle the flue gas metals and save costs.
Wow, that Task Force field trip included some of the biggest “stuff” I’ve ever seen.
The plant puts out 780 MW, cold starts in half a day, 35+ years of local supply. Zero water leaves the site other than the cooling stack and the scrubbers, which cost more than some small island nation’s GDP. The plant uses pretty sophisticated tech to pull the Nox’s and Sox’s as per the Clean Air Act eliminating acid rain in the 90’s and on.
Included is a pic of the tour with Longview’s cooling stack in the background, I’m the guy in the white helmet. 😉 We are standing on top of one of the gypsum reclamation piles, which they landfill on site. I overheard a few engineers complementing the site development and general reclamation safety features.
