http://infohouse.p2ric.org/
We have in several reports addressed the issue of Mercury contamination in Coal Ash, especially in Ash generated by Coal-fired power plants where Mercury control systems utilize the Ash, with additive absorbents one way or another applied, as a medium with which to remove Mercury from the exhaust gas.
There are alternatives to that type of Mercury control technique, as we'll address in future reports.
But, as we've explained, some Mercury absorbents, which bind Mercury and adhere to the Ash, can interfere with subsequent Ash beneficiation processes and/or negate the effect of "air entrainment agents", "AEA's", that are added to concrete mixes, in which Coal Ash might be used, in order to, primarily, improve both the flow characteristics of the fluid concrete mix and the freeze-thaw performance of the cured concrete.
Technologies are being developed to address those issues, as we documented most recently in:
West Virginia Coal Association | Mercury Does Not Disqualify Coal Ash for Use in Concrete | Research & Development; concerning, in part: "United States Patent Application 0110197791 - Compositions and Methods to Sequester Flue Gas Mercury in Concrete; 2011; Assignee: Albemarle Corporation; Abstract: Mercury adsorbed from combustion gas by activated carbon can be sequestered in concrete containing air-entraining admixtures. The activated carbon may be made by providing a carbon char made from coconut shell, wood, or lignite that was activated by a method selected from the group consisting of activating with steam, activating with CO2, activating in an environment containing free oxygen, and combinations thereof to provide an activated carbon ... . The activated carbon may be injected into a combustion gas stream containing fly ash and mercury and may then be removed with fly ash from the gas stream. The resulting composition may be used as a partial substitute for cement in air-entrained concretes".But, concerns continue to be expressed that Mercury, thus entrained, or entrapped, in Coal Ash, and in Concrete made with Coal Ash, could somehow leach out, or even somehow be emitted as an off-gas during the Concrete curing process, and escape into the environment.
In fact, the issue of "toxics", like Mercury, leaching or evaporating out of Coal Ash has been addressed and studied so many times and in so many places, as, for another instance, from our own United States National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine:
TRASH OR TREASURE?: Putting Coal Combustion Waste to Work; "David Tenenbaum; NIH National Library of Medicine; Concrete is especially likely to release toxic components shortly after mixing, during the curing and hardening phase. Harold Walker, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Ohio State University, measured the release of airborne mercury while concrete containing fly ash cured for 28 days. “Less than 0.022% of the total quantity of mercury present from all mercury sources in the concrete was released during the curing process,” Walker and colleagues wrote in volume 23, issue 4 (2009) of Energy and Fuels, “and therefore, nearly all of the mercury was retained in the concrete”;with the conclusion being that almost nothing does, in fact, escape from Coal Ash, whether it's used as a component of Concrete or otherwise, that, we must begin to view all objections to the beneficial use of Coal Ash, especially as a component of Concrete mixtures, and objections to the use of Coal in general, not with skepticism, but, with suspicion. Keep in mind, that, as seen for only one instance in:
For Natural Gas, the Other Shoe Drops; "'For Natural Gas, the Other Shoe Drops'; February, 2011; For years, certain natural gas producers, led by Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, have pursued a myopic strategy of demonizing coal in an effort to seize a larger share of the electricity generation market. It started in 2008, when Chesapeake funded an unsigned “Dirty Coal” advertising campaign. It featured black and white photos of children, with coal smudged faces, looking sad. Having set the table with anti coal propaganda, McClendon then teamed up with the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope to implement a legislative strategy. The pair traveled around the country, pitching natural gas as the “bridge fuel” to a green energy future. ... It’s an ancient strategy: Divide and conquer. Today, it’s the greens and gas taking down coal; tomorrow, it will be the greens taking down gas";
it's more than just likely that unlikely alliances have been created behind the scenes and under the table to prey on Coal, not to the benefit of the public environment, but, to that of private profit. And, that could be one reason why the now, to us obviously, specious issue of "toxics" leaching out of Coal Ash, whether or not it's embedded in Concrete, keeps twitching, even though it's been knocked in the head so many times it doesn't really have a head left.
The Coal Ash toxics leaching issue has been so perniciously prosecuted, in fact, that it has reached, and been refuted, in some rather unlikely places.
As we documented previously, in:
West Virginia Coal Association | Hawaii Coal + Sunlight = Methanol | Research & Development; concerning:
"United States Patent 4,455,153 - Storing Solar Energy in Synthetic Fuels; 1984; Douglas Jakahi, Hawaii; Abstract: Processes and apparatus for storing solar energy in synthetic fuels are disclosed. The disclosed processes include the steps of introducing steam and carbonaceous material such as coal ... into a molten gasification medium ... and supplying sufficient solar heat (so that) the carbonaceous material and steam react to produce a synthesis gas ... . ... the synthesis gas ... can be used as a fuel, as a chemical feedstock, or as a raw material in the production of methanol";
even folks in America's furthest-flung state, where they mine absolutely no Coal, understand just how valuable Coal can be; and, herein, we see that Hawaii, as well, has tackled the issue of Mercury leaching from Coal Ash, even though Hawaii, as seen in:
http://www.nma.org/pdf/
AES Hawaii Power Plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; "AES Hawaii Power Plant is a medium-size coal-fired electrical power station located in the south-west corner of ... Oahu. Owned and operated by AES Hawaii, the plant is the only coal-fired power plant in the state of Hawaii";
has only one lonely little old Coal-fired power plant in the entire state, which they supply with Coal imported from Indonesia; which is, let's face it, a lot closer to Hawaii than is the Ohio Valley aorta of US Coal Country.
In any case, the specious issue of toxics leaching from Coal Ash reached even that outpost, and, was addressed by the power plant's operator, with assistance from an engineering consultant.
As seen in excerpts from the initial link in this dispatch to:
"'Risk Evaluation of Leachable Mercury From Concrete Products Made With Fly Ash'
by Robert McCann, et. al., AES Hawaii, Inc., and URS Corporation, NC, CA and OH
May, 2007; World of Coal Ash
(Note: "AES" is, as seen in:
AES Corporation | We are the energy and AES Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; "The AES Corporation is a Fortune 200 company that generates and distributes electrical power. The company was founded on January 28, 1981, as "Applied Energy Services" by Roger Sant from the U.S. Federal Energy Administration and Dennis Bakke from the Office of Management and Budget. AES is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, and is one of the world's leading power companies, generating and distributing electric power in 27 countries and employing 27,000 people worldwide";
a sizeable operation with worldwide interests in power generation, Coal-fired and otherwise; while, as in:
URS Corporation and URS Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; "URS Corporation is an engineering, design and construction firm and a U.S. federal government contractor. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, URS is a full-service, global organization with offices located in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific. URS Corporation’s oldest predecessor company was founded in 1904. URS was established in 1951, and incorporated in 1957 as Broadview Research, a research group active in the area of physical and engineering sciences";
URS are a major international engineering and consulting firm.)
AES Hawaii, Inc., operates a 203 Megawatt circulating bed coal and alternative fuel-fired cogeneration facility.
A portion of the fly ash may be used as a concrete admixture .
Per AES Hawaii's solid waste management permit (SWMP), composite samples of fly ash are routinely tested for total leachable metal content. In 2005, several samples exceeded the permit limit for leachable mercury (0.00025 milligram per liter) determined through the Synthetic Precipitation Leaching Procedure.
(And, here we get into some interesting stuff. First, the "0.00025 milligram per liter" of Mercury ain't much; and, it was Mercury that could be leached, under the most extreme conditions, not Mercury that actually would leach, or did leach. Further, more tellingly, as can be learned from the US EPA via:
http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/
and, from the United States Geologic Survey, via:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2000/
the "Synthetic Precipitation Leaching Procedure" is actually performed with mixtures of Nitric or Sulfuric acid in water; and, there are two versions of the test. One specifies the use of an acid solution that, given the logarithmic nature of the pH scale, is ten times more acidic than the other, standard SPLP test. And, it is that far stronger acid which the US EPA specifies is to be used on Coal mine and Coal combustion wastes to determine whether or not they present an metal leaching danger. Draw your own conclusions.)
AES Hawaii prepared a risk evaluation to determine if mercury from fly ash posed an environmental concern when intermixed in concrete products.
The primary objectives of the risk evaluation were to:
1. evaluate whether incorporating fly ash in concrete/flowable fill reduces mercury leachability to acceptable limits; and:
2. determine if a threshold fly ash content exists that results in unacceptable mercury concentrations in concrete/flowable fill leachates.
The study demonstrated that, even in cases where mercury in the raw fly ash exceeded the SWMP limit, no detectable mercury is leachable from the final concrete products containing such fly ash.
Since no mercury was detected in the leachate, no threshold of fly ash content (up to 90 percent cement replacement) appears to exist.
Mercury in AES Hawaii fly ash used as an admixture in concrete products does not pose an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment."
--------------------------
Actually, since "no detectable mercury is leachable from the final concrete products containing" Coal Ash, we think it would be safe to say that "Mercury in ... fly ash used as an admixture in concrete products" doesn't "pose" any "risk", at all, "to human health or the environment".
We know that the fact this study was conducted in part and financed entirely by a major international producer of Coal-based electrical power could be used by others, as might be intuited from our introductory citation of "For Natural Gas, the Other Shoe Drops"; to make that final conclusion seem a tad less than gospel.
But, as we will see in additional reports to follow, the Hawaii AES and URS Corporation conclusions drawn herein, in essence that Mercury simply does not escape from Coal Ash concrete in which it might be entombed, have been amply confirmed via impeccable third-party investigation.
And, we really should see Hawaii, who has no deposits of Coal or of Natural Gas, as a sort of impartial source. In fact, they recognize and acknowledge, as in:
The "Coal is Filthy" Ad-Scam; "The purpose of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is to improve the relationship between the government and the people with the objective of improving the effectiveness of the government, the business climate and in some cases, tradition, to foster an atmosphere in Hawaii that results in maximum personal freedom for every individual. We recognize that personal freedom comes with the price of personal responsibility, accountability and respect for others. We believe each person must be free to succeed or fail in building wealth and in relationships with others. The mission of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is to promote individual liberty, the free market and limited accountable government. Through research papers, policy briefings, commentaries and conferences, the Institute seeks to educate and inform Hawaii's policymakers, news media and the general public. 'The "Coal is Filthy" Ad-Scam'; Paul Driessen; May, 2007; Even in this “era of corporate social responsibility,” brazen violations of honesty, transparency and accountability standards occur regularly. Exhibit 1: the recent “Coal is filthy” ad campaign. Prominent advertisements in major U.S. papers featured smudge-faced California models, whose misleading claims about emissions from coal-fired electrical generating plants were reinforced by a CleanSkyCoalition.com website. The campaign urged citizens to tell government officials, “No more filthy coal plants.” The Coalition, it turns out, wasn’t another gaggle of environmental pressure groups, like those listed on the website. It was a cabal of natural gas companies, led by Chesapeake Energy of Oklahoma. Their goal wasn’t helping Americans get “clean skies” and “live longer,” as their smear campaign proclaimed. It was fattening corporate wallets. The cabal hoped new laws would reduce the likelihood of more coal plants being constructed, make it harder to retrofit older plants to meet tougher air quality standards, and force massive switching to natural gas. As demand rose and supplies tightened, gas prices would surge";
a few things that US Coal Country news writers and publishers seem to prefer to ignore.
But, that's okay.
As we will see in some reports to follow, there have been even additional, and impeccable, assurances that there is absolutely no danger of Mercury, absorbed onto Coal Ash in a Coal power plant Mercury control process, leaching from that Coal Ash as it is used as a property-enhancing admixture in concrete.
And, as it happens, again as we will see, America's Clean Energy Alternative has a tad bit of a Mercury issue itself, that has so far been successfully kept under the rug, but, no Coal Ash to mop it up and bury it in concrete with.