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Black Bear Preparation Plant
Mountaineer Mine
Gilbert, West Virginia
To design and build extensive material handling, storage, blending
and reclaim facilities in one of the largest coal preparation
facilities in North America, Mingo Logan selected Roberts &
Schaefer to provide engineering, procurement, and construction
services and meet a tight schedule.
 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 moved overland to the plant site on a two-flight transfer
conveyor system. At the plant site, R&S provided additional
unloading facilities, consisting of truck dumps and open storage.
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 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.
R&S also provided fresh water to the preparation plant, all
fire protection and ancillaries. The plant was operational in
about 11 months, while the complete facility was operational in
about 13 months, meeting Mingo Logan's tight timetable.
 
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