Coal Ash Pond Decanter Skimmer
Big Ass Surface Skimmer
At SkimOil we have developed some better methods and equipment for decanting ash ponds. Our floating weir skimmers (FWS) originally designed as surface oil skimmers, simply drain an area from the top down and remove whatever is flowable on/from the waters surface. In the ash ponds we found that the FWS with their laminar flow-do a great job of removing surface water without stirring up all the stuff under the water surface.
We just had to scale these up some to deal with the large flow rates needed to efficiently drain the ash ponds. There’s a LOT of water in/on these coal ash ponds. We needed over 5 times our normal oil skimming flow rates, so we manifolded 3 of our largest FWS (#FWS00A381) skimmers together to get the high flow rates……..and they are awesome——but not enough! (Pictured Left). Back to the drawing board! We had to scale up and design our new Big Ass Surface Skimmer (BASS) that has a 36” wide weir and an 8” outlet and has projected flow capabilities of up to 1500 GPM. (Pictured Below) We prefer not making these any larger due to ergonomics and the fact that they have to be installed by men in usually small boats. These new BBSS units can fit into the back of an SUV for easy transport. Normal operations include a powerful pump on shore hooked to a large (10”) HDPE pipe extending far into the pond and connecting to the skimmers.
Need more flow rate ?………simply use more of these BASS units.
NEW BIG ASS SURFACE SKIMMER PICTURES
The beauty of our floating Big Ass Surface Skimmer is that it has only one moving part-the hinged weir and it can work with any pump that can pull suction. We’ve had the floating weir skimmers on the market for over 20 years, so they are a well proven and reliable surface skimmer that automatically self adjusts to the pumps flow rate-allowing the operator to take as little as 1/8” to over 3” of water off the surface—–without affecting the underlying water or in the case the underlying settled coal ash. We now have these floating weir skimmers working in several power plants dewatering ash ponds. Ironically several years ago several power plants were using the smaller FWS units to remove floating centospheres of ash from the surface of water in many similar ponds.
Like most everything else that we all used to do, we’ve found a better way to do it today. This is certainly true of coal fired power plants and their waste ash disposal and storage. Back when the power plants started using ponds for storing the ash under a water cap it was probably the recognized best method. Out of sight and out of mind. Somewhat.
Coal Ash Pond Decanter Skimmer
Fast forward to today and we’ve learned that while it worked at the time (mostly) ,but now we see it was a bit short sighted because of what we didn’t know then-that the ponds and their contents leak, burst, leach into the ground water and are presenting a serious hazard today and the ash that was so conveniently out of sight and mind now has to be cleaned up.
The ash pond problem mostly came to light when a large ash pond with a LEAKING 48” STORM WATER PIPE dumped some 39,0000 TONS of coal ash and wastewater into a nearby river. After that incident other problems kept surfacing involving heavy metals and other carcinogens leaching into ground water and drinking water sources. There’s a LOT of bottled water being delivered by power plants to a lot of people who are being affected by the ash ponds.
Coal burners were fairly efficient…..coal was cheap and readily available and kept a lot of people employed, from the mines to the transportation and the material handling equipment manufacturers. The coal business isn’t so good today as power generation efficiencies have been greatly improved and lots of plants are switching to natural gas as the new clean and efficient fuel.
Bottom Line: Coal ash ponds are and will remain to be a problem until they get cleaned up-meaning decanted and dewatered and then safe storage of the actual coal ash. We’ve developed a reliable tool, the floating weir skimmers that can greatly aid in the safe and efficient decanting of the ash ponds.