Mingo Logan Coal - Coal Prep Plant
- Owner: Mingo Logan Coal Company
- Project: Coal Preparation Plant
- Location: Black Bear Preparation Plant and Mountaineer Mine, Gilbert, West Virginia
- Scope: Engineering, Procurement, and Construction
Project Background
Roberts & Schaefer Company was awarded a turnkey contract from Mingo Logan Coal Company for engineering, procurement, and construction of the coal preparation plant at Mingo Logan Coal Company’s Black Bear Preparation Plant and Mountaineer Mine in Gilbert, West Virginia. The system was successfully completed and in operation in 1992.
The 1,600 TPH coal preparation plant including material handling, storage, blending and reclaim systems is one of the largest coal preparation facilities in North America. The mountainous location of the Black Bear Preparation Plant at the Mountaineer Mine, and the distance between the mine face and the loadout, presented unusual engineering challenges. Raw coal is received at the mine site and stored in a 6,000-ton silo, before being conveyed overland to the plant site on a two-flight transfer conveyor system. At the plant site, additional unloading facilities, consisting of truck dumps and open storage were provided. Combined ROM product is screened and passed through a rotary breaker before being stored in three 6,600-ton raw coal storage silos. The silo includes provisions for overflow stockout and emergency reclaim.
The preparation plant consists of two independent 800-ton circuits, each provided with separate surge bins to ensure uniform splitting of the plant feed. Each circuit wet-screens the raw coal into three fractions: a 6 x 3/8 fraction for processing in the coarse vessel circuit, a 3/8 x 16 mesh fraction for the heavy medium cyclone circuit, and a 16 mesh x 0 fraction, which is the coarse, deslimed product.
Water clarification and magnetite control circuits are common to both plant circuits. Clean coal moves on a single conveyor to three clean coal silos about one and a half miles downstream. Ancillary systems included fresh water to the preparation plant, all fire protection and other ancillaries. The coal preparation plant was operational in about 11 months, while the complete facility was operational in about 13 months, meeting Mingo Logan’s tight timetable.