Posted on 04/02/2011 10:37:39 AM PDT by glorgau
Coating concrete destined to rebuild America's crumbling bridges and roadways with some of the millions of tons of ash left over from burning coal could extend the life of those structures by decades, saving billions of dollars of taxpayer money, scientists reported in Anaheim, California at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society on March 29. They reported on a new coating material for concrete made from flyash that is hundreds of times more durable than existing coatings and costs only half as much.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Check out a company called “Headwaters,” ticker HW.
Radioactive coatings. Yippee.
This stuff has been around for at least 15 years or more; but I have yet to hear of it USED anywhere. That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been used, but it seemed like a great idea/product when I first heard of it, and then I heard no more about it ... until now. Is it in actual use anywhere?
Besides, it won’t matter much if the EPA has its way and BANS cement.
Flyash in concrete....I think I remember it from my text...They’ve been using it sonce the ‘30s.
the fly ash issue and use for concrete has been around for many years indeed, I can attest to the use of it for leaching ponds, compressed into large cores that the water flows through... ever decreasing core sizes as the retention transfer ponding system coumes to the outfall.
The result is very cheap and very simple for cleaning and replacement, the results are exceptional for heavy metals and dissolved solids capture.
Also, and yes I know a lot more about this than would appear I suppose, you trench dig a drain up hill, remembering contour lines to limit erosion and force point blow out, fill the trench with pellets of compressed ash and some stuff I know, and then allow it to capture phosphates, arsenic and other nastier stuff, as they run in depths and over time, you dig out the trench, dry and compress to road base, and repeat....
I am a weird dude, there are a few things I have dabbled with I suppose, oh if your interested I do refractory and furnace building for stuff as well... homemade sizes.... lol.. I bet if we put our listings of can do or build on here we could build a good sized workforce pool for FReinds, I would be into that in a heartbeat....
EL
This sounds a lot like something that a company called Marine Shale Processors proposed years ago. I’m pretty sure the EPA shut them down or forced them to change how they dealt with waste products - it was never used in road construction or repair (except possibly on Marine Shale’s property).
The only reason we have these mountain of fly ash is because Richard Nixons EPA forced coal users to capture it to prevent Global Warming.
We all know how that turned out.
15 years...No more then 40 years ago . What was Wisconsin Highway 15 and now Interstate 43 from Milwaukee to Beloit was built using Flyash/Concrete in the late 1960s.
Weren’t what they used to call cinder blocks made from that waste?
Rather longer than that, m’FRiend. The Romans knew the technique, and it’s one reason the Via Appia has lasted up to the present day.
I remember very vaguely that when they were constructing the Erie Canal in NYS, another MATERIAL composition was "discovered" and a lawsuit came about and the "inventor" won...big time.
Absolutely correct. I once worked on an old school building that was converted into a church. The walls were of cinder block.
I was installing wiring for a sound system and lighting for a recording booth. I fed the wiring through the cinder block walls and installed it in various outlet boxes which were inserted into the walls. There was a fine layer of plaster on the walls to smoothen them out.
Once I removed the plaster cover and drilled through the very hard cinder block, I attached the outlet boxes to the wall and then covered the surface with a plastic filler. After sanding and painting, the outlets and switches on the wall looked great. It was if they were part of the original construction.
****This stuff has been around for at least 15 years or more; but I have yet to hear of it USED anywhere.*****
Bottom ash has been used around here for road beds, bedding for pipelines, landscaping and many other uses.
A local town used it to start paving it’s dirt streets but some old biddy came down with a summer cold and blamed it on the ash, so the city quit and the power plant chose not to sell any more ash to them.
Fly ash has been used for filler in concrete ever since this plant started up. The fly ash, from Powder River Basin coal in Wyoming, when wet, sets up like concrete so many of the workers there took home barrels of it to use in setting wood fence posts. It was found that galvanized pipe fence posts will rust out within a few years but UN galvanized are ok and so are wood.
***EPA forced coal users to capture it to prevent Global Warming.***
Actually, that was due to sulphur in the coal. Scrubbers and Electrostatic precipitators took care of that problem.
Now they are trying to find something else to become frightened of, like mercury, radiation and other trace elements ti create fear and more “regulations”.
When the local plant was being built, the power ompany placed a weather station in a farmer’s field, with his permission. All it did was guage rain and wind. Six months later he demanded it be removed because “It was killing his crops”!
Stupidity knows no bounds.
This is hardly new science. A professor (materials science) at the University of Wisconsin, Millwaukee campus, reporteed on this 20 years ago. Do you think that anybody in the WI State DOT cared? Nooooooo. They keep themselves employed by continuing to resurface our roads with shoddy materials. The roads have to be resurfaced every year, or two, and it is a lifetime job.
“hundreds of times more durable than existing coatings and costs only half as much.”
I skeptical about the durability but believe that it cost only half as much. The problem is that it is not going to lower the cost of rebuilding the bridges. The contractors will still charge the same and declare it’s because they are in a learning phase with the new technology. When the bridges don’t last as long or require repair they will use the same argument. St. Peters and the Pantheon are still standing while some of our bridges are less than 50 years old. Hmmmm?
The building trades unions will have none of this...we must rebuild everything every fifty years, or better, every thirty to assure prosperity for working families.
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