Promoting Illinois coal utilization through underground disposal of combustion products

The utilization of high-sulfur Illinois coal by utility plants has been decreasing since the enactment of the 1990 Clean Coal Air Act Amendment. Illinois coal producers can make their coal more attractive by offering the choice of taking the coal combustion and flue-gas desulfurization products from the utility plants and placing them in the abandoned sections of their mines. To be competitive, however, coal producers need to select an environmentally acceptable transportation-handling-placement system through which the cost-per-ton of product disposed of can be minimized. In this paper, several such systems are presented. The favourable operating conditions of each system are determined in terms of distance and tonnage ranges. For a 90 kt/year (100 thousand stpy) operation, it is found that, up to a distance of 150 km (93 miles), transporting products by truck would be less expensive than using rail cars and intermodal containers. Also, a case study is given in which a cost analysis is conducted for an underground coal mine using the room and pillar mining method, receiving products from two Illinois utility plants. At 90 kt/year (100 thousand stpy) and a distance of 40 km (25 miles) between the power plant and the mine, it is found that truck transportation and underground placement would cost 0.090/t-km dollars (0.131/st-mile dollars) and 2.98/t dollars (2.70/st dollars), respectively. 8 refs., 4 figs