Displaying items by tag: Charah Solutions

Heidelberg Materials announced a US acquisition at the same time as the ongoing IEEE/IAS-PCA Cement Conference in Dallas, Texas this week. It has entered into a purchase agreement to acquire The SEFA Group, a fly ash recycling company based in Lexington, South Carolina. Its operations include five beneficiation plants, five utility partners, 20 locations and over 500 employees. It supplies fly ash to over 800 ready-mixed concrete plants in 13 states. It processes around 1Mt/yr of ash from storage ponds using its proprietary thermal beneficiation process. No value for the acquisition was disclosed.

The proposition for a heavy building materials manufacturer of securing a supply of fly ash is an attractive one. Fly ash can improve the performance of concrete, reduce its cost by lowering the amount of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) required and decrease the associated carbon footprint. It can also be use to make blended cement products. Heidelberg Materials and its US-subsidiary Lehigh Hanson could have various options here including using this new supply of fly ash internally, selling it on to other companies or licensing the beneficiation technology. Heidelberg Materials’ global sustainability report in 2021 reported that just under 9% of its cement-type portfolio comprised pozzolana or fly ash cements.

Graph 1: Coal combustion product production and use, 1991 – 2021. Source: ACAA.

Data from the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA) shows in Graph 1 that coal combustion products (CCP) production have declined in the last decade as the proportion used has steadily risen. In its annual production and use survey, the ACAA revealed that the use of harvested ash continued to grow in 2021 and that it constituted around 10% of the volume of ash recycled from current power plant operation. Thomas H Adams, the executive director of the ACAA, said “The rapidly increasing utilisation of harvested CCP shows that beneficial use markets are adapting to the decline in coal-fuelled electricity generation in the US. New logistics and technology strategies are being deployed to ensure these valuable resources remain available for safe and productive use.” Separately, the ACAA reported that coal-fuelled power stations represented about 50% of the country’s electricity demand in the mid-2010s compared to 20 – 25% in 2021 despite base-load remaining the same. It forecast that fly ash production was likely to remain fairly constant to around 2040 but that harvesting would help to cut the gap between supply and demand in some regional markets. It said that over 2Bnt of coal ash was in disposal. However, no indication of how recoverable this was given although it did note the higher cost of beneficiation. Work on updating specifications was ongoing to suit current circumstances.

As with the slag market, this presents a dilemma for cement and concrete producers that want to become more sustainable. They want to use more by-products from other carbon-intensive heavy industries – such as coal-fired power stations and steel plants – but these industries themselves are also trying to become more sustainable and are producing less secondary cementitious materials. Heidelberg Materials’ interest in a fly ash beneficiation company makes sense because it secures a bigger portion of a dwindling resource from the direct operations and opens up the possibility of selling the beneficiation technology to others. It is also worth mentioning that other fly ash thermal beneficiation processes are available. For example, Charah Solutions installed its MP618 technology at its Sulphur terminal in Louisiana in early 2019.

The general fly ash market in the US looks set to track the level of coal-fired power generation for the foreseeable future. Yet the proportion of CCPs being used continues to rise. In this context focusing on harvesting may be starting to make more financial sense. Charah Solutions’s new unit in 2019 and SEFA Group’s new units in 2020 and 2021 seem to support this view. Heidelberg Materials’ acquisition of SEFA Group may be further confirmation of this.

US: Charah Solutions has signed a contract with Associated Electric Cooperative (AECI) to receive bottom ash, fly ash and boiler slag from its Thomas Hill Energy Center coal-fired power plant in Missouri until 2026. Charah Solutions will recycle the by-products to produce supplementary cementitious products and redistribute these through its MultiSource materials network. The network consists of 40 locations across the US.

President and CEO Scott Sewell said "We are delighted to partner with AECI to manage their ash marketing needs at Thomas Hill while supplying our concrete producers with the high-quality material they need."

US: Energy company Luminant has awarded Charah Solutions a fly ash management contract extension for its Miami Fort and Zimmer coal-fired power plants in North Bend and Moscow, Ohio. Charah Solutions says that it will pass on the ash for use in concrete production. It will continue to manage the onsite landfill and impoundment operations under its existing contract with Luminant, including material loading, hauling and disposal of approximately 180,000t/yr. In addition, Charah Solutions will be responsible for the beneficiation and utilisation of approximately 400,000t/yr of fly ash. The contract ends in 2027, when both power plants are expected to close.

President and chief executive officer Scott Sewell said “We have been proud to partner with Luminant on its sustainability efforts for many years and are delighted to extend our relationship at these Ohio sites through 2027. We have dramatically reduced the need to landfill fly ash at Miami Fort and Zimmer through our on-going partnership, saving Luminant both expense and valuable landfill space while lowering their risk.” He added “As a result of this expanded agreement, Charah Solutions will continue to provide a reliable supply of high-quality fly ash to ready mix concrete producers in the Midwest, Northeast and deep South through our MultiSource network.”

US: Charah Solutions will sell and market production fly ash from NV Energy’s North Valmy coal-fired power plant in Valmy, Nevada under a contract with the power producer. The contract runs until 2025. The company will distribute the ash through its 40-location nationwide MultiSource materials network as supplementary cementitious material (SCM) for cement and concrete production.

President and chief executive officer Scott Sewell said, “We are delighted to partner with NV Energy to manage their fly ash marketing needs at Valmy, while supplying our concrete producers with the high-quality material they need.”

US: Charah Solutions has been awarded a marketing contract by Dominion Energy for the beneficiation and utilisation of up to 8.1Mt reclaimed ponded coal ash at its Chesterfield Power Station in Chester, Virginia. The contract will run from 2021 until 2032. It follows local state legislation requiring the power company to remove coal ash from sites at the Chesterfield Power Station within 15 years.

As part of the agreement, Charah Solutions will install processing and transportation infrastructure in 2021 to facilitate rail transportation of the ash from Chesterfield Power Station to cement kiln feed markets. The beneficiated ash product will replace other currently utilised virgin raw materials in the production of Portland cement at multiple cement kiln locations in the eastern US for the next decade and beyond, and help supply the growing demand for concrete in the construction industry.

US: Charah Solutions has secured a contract with energy supplier Entergy for provision of environmental services to three coal-fired power plants in Louisiana and Arkansas. The gives Charah Solutions the right to dispose of or market 0.9Mt/yr of coal combustion residuals (CCR), including to cement producers in the region for use as a cement additive.

US: Charah Solutions has been awarded an extension to its contract to provide byproduct sales and material handling operations for Luminant’s Miami Fort Power Plant and Zimmer Power Plant in Ohio. Charah Solutions will continue to manage and market coal combustion products produced by these two units. It currently sells and markets grade Class F fly ash from the two power plants via its materials network to concrete product manufacturers and ready mix concrete producers in the Midwest, Northeast and South regions of the country.

In addition, Charah Solutions will continue all other coal combustion residuals material handling and disposal operations at both locations, including landfill management and byproduct loadout, as well as the operations and maintenance of the plant flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) system at Miami Fort.

Charah Solutions has been steadily building up its fly ash distribution business in recent years with an eye on the supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) market. This week it opened the third of its new series of SCM grinding plants, at Oxnard in California, US. The unit sticks out because it is focusing on grinding natural pozzolans. The plant will receive natural pozzolan by truck and rail and then use Charah’s patented grinding technology to produce pozzolan marketed under its MultiPozz brand. The previous plants in this series mentioned natural pozzolans but this is the first to promote it explicitly.

The change is potentially telling because global demand for granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) outstrips supply. Both performance benefits and environmental regulations are pushing this. It’s a similar situation for fly ash, also driven by trends to close coal-fired power stations in some countries. As Charles Zeynel of SCM trading firm ZAG International explained in the March 2019 issue of Global Cement Magazine, “...volcanic pozzolans are a potential SCM of the future. This is gaining traction, but it’s slow progress at the moment. This will be the answer for some users in some locations.”

The problem though is that natural pozzolans are down the list of preferred SCMs for their chemical properties after silica fume, GBFS and fly ash. The first is expensive but the latter two were traditionally cheap and easy to obtain if a cement or concrete producer had access to a source or a distribution network. Natural pozzolans are very much subject to variations in availability.

It’s no surprise then that Charah is promoting natural pozzolans in a Californian plant given that state’s environmental stance. It’s unclear where Charah is sourcing their pozzolan from but they are not the only company thinking about this in the US. Sunrise Resources, for example, is working on the environmental permits for a natural pozzolan mine near Tonopah in Nevada. As it described in its company presentation, California and Nevada are the most affected states in the fly ash supply crisis because they are, “...at the end of the line when it comes to rail deliveries from power stations in central and eastern USA.” It also estimated that California used 0.9Mt of pozzolan in its cement production of which about 90% is fly ash. The state produced 9.6Mt in 2015. Other companies are also mining and distributing natural pozzolans in the US as the website for the National Pozzolan Association (NPA) lists. Although, if this line-up is comprehensive, then the field is still fairly select. Most of these companies are based in the west of the country.

One last thing to consider is that various groups are tackling a potential future lack of SCMs for the cement industry by making their own pozzolanic materials through the use of calcined clay. These groups include the Swiss-government backed LC3 project and Cementir’s Futurecem products. Using clay should bypass the supply issues with natural pozzolans but the cost of calcining it requires at the very least an investment to get started.

As concrete enthusiasts often point out, a variant of pozzolanic concrete was used by the Romans to build many of their iconic structures, some of which survive to the present day. To give the last word to the NPA, “What is old is new again: natural pozzolan is back!” If environmental trends continue and steel and coal plants continue to be shut then it might just be right.

US: Charah Solutions plans to open a grinding plant to make supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) from natural pozzolan at Oxnard in California. The unit will be accessible by truck and railway. It will sell pozzolan and other materials to concrete product manufacturers throughout south California.

The Oxnard plant will be operated in partnership with Diversified Minerals, a supplier and manufacturer of standard and custom blend cement and concrete products. It will receive natural pozzolan by truck and rail and then grind pozzolan marketed under the brand MultiPozz pozzolan. MultiPozz pozzolan will be distributed throughout Charah Solutions’ MultiSource materials network of more than 40 nationwide in the US with international sourcing and distribution.

“Fly ash is becoming more difficult to source in California, which is forcing the construction industry to look for viable alternatives. Natural pozzolan and other SCMs that meet ASTM specifications are generating very high interest. With Charah Solutions’ resources and DMI’s strategic partnership with the only active pozzolan mine in Southern California, we are both the closest and the first to bring these products to market,” said Jim Price, chief executive officer (CEO) of Diversified Minerals.

US: Charah Solutions has opened a terminal for fly ash in Hopedale, Massachusetts. The unit has railway access and is connected to local road networks. It is intended to serve customers in New England.

Charah Solutions says that the terminal will increase the availability of fly ash from its MultiSource materials network locations in the South, New England, the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains and California. These locations supply Class C and Class F fly ash for ready mix concrete producers and other customers.