Coal Pipeline in Ohio
The announcement by the Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Company (Pitt-Consol) was made on 12 Sep 1956 and published in the New York Times that it had finished laying 108 miles of pipe to transport its coal. However, three huge pumping stations, placed about 35 miles apart on the steel pipeline, were still to be completed. It was the world’s first long-distance commercial coal pipeline, designed to carry a slurry of half water and half fine-screened coal from a vast open pit mine near Georgetown, Ohio to an electricity generating plant near Cleveland, Ohio. The steel pipeline had an inside diameter of 10-inches, and was designed to carry 150 tons of coal per hour. The project cost was estimated in 1956 as around $10,000,000. Pitt-Consol was the largest coal company in the U.S.
On 20 Feb 1957, there was a preliminary test on the coal slurry pipeline. Although some years earlier, the idea of pushing coal through a pipeline might have sounded like a fantasy, after a millon-dollar investment on a feasibility study, a practical project had been developed. The necessary conditions to maintain turbulence in the two-phase fluid that would keep particles in suspension had been worked out, and a minimum and maximum speed was engineered. This was the progress made since six years earlier, when the New York Times (4 Apr 1951) had an article on the announcement by the coal company that it was going to build a 17,000-foot-long demonstration pipeline.
Original hopes had been to have the full pipeline opened by Apr 1957. However, the teething problems extended for a year, because it was not until 28 Feb 1958, that the trouble shooters were reported to have the pipeline ready to go into full operation, “after a year of harassing delays.” The pipeline had been running 24-hour tests, then being stopped for check-ups. However, by this time, there had been a full five-day period delivering coal. Part of the solution had been to install new grinding equipment at the mine site to produce a higher percentage of finer coal particles in the pipeline mixture. Early transport problems had been due to the size of the pulverized coal, for in Apr 1957, a clog of oversize coal granules had plugged the line. Locating the plug to remove it had taken “considerable time.” Also, there was concern than the station pumps, despite their terrific pressure, couldn’t force the coal slurry up a steep hill south of Carrollton, Ohio.
However, by 17 Aug 1958, Pitt-Consol announced the pipeline was in full operation, and in fact, its coal deliveries through the pipeline had been operating at full capacity for several weeks. A total of 102,000 tons of coal had traveled through the pipeline in the first full month of operation, which matched the estimated capacity of 100,000 tons a month. By now, the project cost was reported as $13,500,000.
The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company was reported as hoping to save $12,500,000 annually on railroad freight costs, by moving the coal in this form from the Pitt-Consol mining operation, to the Eastlake Generating Plant, 20 miles outside of Cleveland. The coal supplier had a contract to deliver 18,000,000 tons of coal over a 15 year period. At the outset, rail tariffs were $3.47 per ton, whereas the pipeline could deliver the coal, including preparation and dewatering costs at less than $3.00 per ton.
The slurry traveled at an average of three miles per hour, to complete the 108-mile trip in a little over 35 hours. On arrival, water was removed and the finely-powdered coal was dried in a five-story processing plant, to ready it for use as fuel in boilers producing steam to drive turbines powering the Cleveland Electric generators.
For the route of the pipeline, the Ohio legislature had granted the right of eminent domain. At the time, this was facilitated by the initial participation of the railroads, which gave no opposition. The rail companies expected to benefit from intimate knowledge of the progress and problems of this first of its kind project. Also, the mine, as one of the largest in the country, would also extract more lump coal while producing the required quantity of pulverized output for the pipeline, and the railroads would get their benefit when hauling the bulk coal.
Despite the original expectations, the pipeline was only used for six years from 1957 to 1963, but did deliver 6 million tons of coal in that time. Although it was highly efficient, and environmentally relatively benign, it was mothballed when the railroads offered competitively low freight tariffs of $1.88 per ton. The pipeline was kept on call to discourage the railroad increasing rates later. Within 20 years of its startup, the Ohio pipeline did, however, inspire another fifteen long-distance slurry pipelines to be built in various places around the world, including the U.S. The Black Mesa pipeline began operation in western states in November 1970.
Any new proposed construction of coal pipelines is hampered by the issues of eminent domain for the route, water availability and rights, and of course lobbying by the railroad industry, which transports about two-thirds of the coal produced in the U.S.
According the Right Of Way magazine (Aug 1982), the concept of a coal slurry pipeline was patented as long ago as 1891, and a first coal slurry pilot plant was built in a vacant lot at 58th Street and Madison Avenue in New York City. An operational 1,750-ft hydraulic coal pipeline was first built in England (1914), to move coal from barges at the Thames River docks into London. It was able to wind around buildings that blocked the route of a mechanical conveyor.
