Keystone finds value in waste coal

Company envisions environmentally friendly extraction method .

{reg} An American company recently revealed a method that may draw materials from waste coal while eliminating the environmental threat produced by coal burning boilers. The company, Keystone Metals Recovery of Columbia, Md. said that this method can draw metals from the waste for aircraft frames, armor for military vehicles and food and beverage cans.

According to a report by the Repulican Herald, the process employs a fluidized bed boiler, the same equipment used throughout Pennsylvania that generates electricity by burning waste coal.

Bob Baron, a representative of the company, told the publication that they are currently envisioning a plant close enough to each of the cogeneration plants now running in McAdoo, Nesquehoning and other locations so a conveyer belt would be able carry the ash to Keystone's boiler. The conveyor would save power companies the expense of trucking ash to landfills, mine pits or other disposal sites.

At Keystone's plants, the ash and waste coal would run through a process for which the company applied for a U.S. patent in 2007. Last month, Keystone obtained a South African patent. The process begins by heating waste coal or ash in the fluidized bed boiler. Once heated, the particles of waste coal and ash would then be mixed with chlorine gas. Most of the metals in the ash would form compounds with chlorine that would become liquids or gases. Then a device creates a cyclone effect to separate the compounds and distill the individual metals.

According to the report, Baron estimated the process can produce aluminum using half the electricity of smelters that make aluminum from ore. This, he added, would also reduce greenhouse gases. And to further the reduction, Keystone is experimenting with algae, which is also under a pending patent and which, in turn, led Baron to say he could not discuss the process in detail.

According to a researcher who reviewed the process, a pilot plant similar to what Keystone is trying to build will produce 2,320 tons of aluminum a year. Subodh Das, of Phinix LLC Consulting in Lexington, Ky., estimated in his review that Keystone's pilot plant could earn an operating profit of $1.3 million per year.

While Keystone offers environmental solutions, the report said that the company needs $30 million to build its first plant and demonstrate the technology will work.

America generates 120 million tons of coal ash a year. Most of them are produced from power plants. Each year, Pennsylvania produces 10 million tons of ash. According to a 2004 report, the state also has 820 piles of waste coal, which, together with abandoned mines, helped contaminate 3,100 miles of streams. {reg/}