The Pinnacle Project
Project History
US Steel initiated negotiations with BTI on this project in late 1998. Regrettably at that time the economics of the energy industry in general did not bode well for marketing the extra production. Significant characterization work was performed by BTI, but it wasn't until 2003 that the world energy situation started to favor this type of production. After that, negotiations progressed rapidly. Also at that time, unbeknownst to BTI, US Steel was planning to sell off some of its mining assets including the Pinnacle Complex. Unfortunately the sale was completed in late 2003 before a negotiated contract was signed.
US Steel sold the Pinnacle Complex (Mine 50, the wash plant and the waste coal impoundment) to PinnOak Resources and recommended that they follow through with the pond recovery project. BTI reentered negotiations with PinnOak, only to be forestalled again, this time due to a fire in Mine 50. PinnOak restarted Mine 50 in September 2004 with renewed interest in the pond recovery project. This time, negotiations culminated in the signing of a contract in late 2004.
Subsequently, BTI went to BGS engineers to reevaluate an earlier engineering cost estimate for the proposed pond recovery project. Please recall that during this time frame (2003 to late 2004) the world witnessed unprecedented increases in commodity pricing and shipping largely due to the demand on materials from China. As an example, scrap copper pricing went from a few pennies per pound to well over a dollar. As a result, the overall equipment costs for the project increased from $6 million to more than $10 million.
The Pinnacle Project has everything that a Pond Recovery Project operator is looking for:
- A large slurry pond (see pond cross-section)with more than 1,880,000 tons of net recoverable clean coal reserves that are more than adequate to justify the heavy capital investment.
- A steady market for virtually all of the Recovery Project's clean coal production.
- A high quality clean coal product marketable at prices that are attractive to both the owner and the pond recovery project.
- There are sufficient civilian workers in the area with experience in coal mining who have the skills required to operate the dredge and coal cleaning equipment.
- The entire infrastructure for the Recovery Plant (electric power, haul roads, water, truck delivery points) is all nearby, and is all in active use and well maintained.
The Facility
Site History
The Pinnacle mine site contains nearly 100 million tons of un-mined coal reserves available for processing by the Pinnacle Mine No. 50 preparation plant. State-of-the-art long wall and continuous mining machines are currently used to remove the Pocahontas No. 3 coal seam, which enjoys a reputation as the best low volatile coking coal in the world.
Over the years clean coal production from the mine has ranged between 3,500,000 and 4,000,000 tons per year. The Pinnacle Mine No. 50 preparation plant is equipped with a 1,250 TPH coal cleaning plant that works on a 24/7 schedule. This year the mine's business plan reports a production target of 3,800,000 tons during which time the BTI / Pinnacle recovery plant is scheduled to begin operation. It has been reported that production may increase in the next few years resulting in additions to the slurry reserves to be processed by the BTI / Pinnacle recovery operations.
Location
The site for the BTI / Pinnacle recovery plant is located at Pinnacle Mine No. 50 on the Smith Branch of Pinnacle Creek, which is south of the town of Pineville, Wyoming County, West Virginia.
Process Description
The recovery process employed at the Pinnacle Project will be comprised of four distinct systems or circuits. The process starts with the Slurry Delivery System comprised of the dredge, hydraulic pumps and piping to deliver the slurry from the pond to the processing plant.
Slurry delivered to the processing plant first enters the Initial Sizing Circuit to remove oversized and large non-coal materials.
Undersized materials passing through this circuit will undergo further separatory processing in the Primary Sizing and Secondary Sizing circuits.
Please note that only the very finest coal particles size (-325 mesh) passing through the secondary sizing circuit will be processed using the Yoon dewatering reagent. BTI engineers estimate that this will amount to approximately 15 tons per hour (TPH) of the roughly 90 TPH recovered or about 17% of the total. Please refer to the processing diagram.
A BTI designed dredge being readied for a pond recovery project.
