camelot-forum.co.uk

https://renews.biz/81198/banks-plans-to ... t-battery/

Plans to repurpose a derelict coal power station site to a big grid battery site - 2.8GWh of storage. That's a lot of batteries.

I wonder if they will use flow batteries?

I don't understand the purpose of the new rail siding (extreme top.) If there are about 60 container-size battery banks that's only 1 train full. No point building a siding for that.
And we haven't got a very proud history of moving power station parts by rail either.

Banks were big open-cast coal miners in the NE, perhaps the siding is for the extracted PFA mentioned on the drawing for selling to make breeze blocks. (Which is probably the ulterior motive, it remains to be seen whether the battery ever materialises.)

The figures being touted for the number of container sized batteries doesn't actually seem to add up.

I saw this article, suggesting 50 such containers, a week ago:

Doncaster: Public consultation over UK's biggest battery farm

... and I thought it sounded too small. On checking and looking at the Tesla Megapacks for a reference point, I found they come in 1MW or 2MW offerings, both with 3.9MWh per container, so 50 would give you ~195MWh. They are slightly bigger than a half container, but even scaled up for a full size 40ft container, that still only gets us to around 100MW or 200MW and 390MWh.

I assume that the numbers given in the press articles mix initial suggested battery container numbers, with potential final storage numbers as it grows, perhaps towards that 1.45GW grid connection. But all great news.

Probably just a smokescreen to get permission to extract the PFA then.

How valuable is PFA, out of interest?

When it was just dumped it must have been because it wasn't worth recycling into building materials, so I wonder what's changed to make it worth the hassle of digging out of the buried waste now. Just had a quick read up on the stuff and it seems to have been used as a pozzalan for many decades, although I did find a reference to a catastrophe when blocks made from a particular type of waste turned out to self-destruct after a few years. I wonder if the (almost unrelated) use of mining waste when making Mundic blocks influenced the take up of other waste products by the building industry?

A job I was on back in the 90's to build an ice arena used thousands of tonnes of it under the ice rink. After another mention on here, how good is it for build materials, including blocks, if it is radioactive?

Tinbum wrote: ↑Mon Oct 31, 2022 10:54 am A job I was on back in the 90's to build an ice arena used thousands of tonnes of it under the ice rink. After another mention on here, how good is it for build materials, including blocks, if it is radioactive?

Bit off topic, but our first house was very radioactive, so much so that we were forced to do a lot of expensive work to reduce the risk. This was in the early 1980s, when the council were handing out free radon monitoring kits to everyone. Ours showed that the level in our living room was many times higher than the maximum allowable. Ended up having to dig out the whole ground floor, install a radon barrier plus a sump and vent pipes that went out under the rear wall to a vent stack with a fan to provide under floor suction. I reduced the cost by doing the work myself, nearly killed me, breaking up the old concrete floor and hand digging the ground out underneath it. Made a heck of a mess, too. At the time we were told that if we didn't do this work the house would be virtually worthless, as lenders would refuse to lend on it.

How valuable is PFA, out of interest?

Pfa was always a variable product dependent on origin. Some was suitable for direct cement replacement in concrete while most was not. Use as a fine aggregate, with some hydraulic strength development, was another alternative. Later use in insulation blocks became more popular.

All coal fired generating stations emit some radioactive pollutants - they were simply present in the coal seams.

A lot of fly ash has been used in road footings, dams and other placements - where its properties, once compacted, are useful.

Some fly ash used to still contain a small amount of unburnt coal, so was not a good choice wherever cement was concerned (altered setting process in an unwanted manner).

There is no longer much fly ash being produced, from coal-fired generating stations in the UK, so recovery of the stuff, from long-past dumps, clearly has some merit!

Handling the stuff, when dry and fresh, could be very interesting. It can flow better than aerated cement - of that I have plenty of experience!