Dust Control – Soil Stabilization – Erosion Control

Posts Tagged ‘dust control’

Dust Control Technology, Peoria, Ill., has introduced a 180-degree oscillation option for its DustBoss DB-60 model. According to the company, the new feature will allow effective particle control over more than 80,000 square feet of area from a single location. Features include:

· Revised designs require that engineers change to a center water feed to accommodate the increased range of motion

· Larger motor must be installed on the DB-60 or its cousin, the DB-45, to handle the additional work

· Machines will have four different settings, with 45-, 90-, 135- and 180-degree oscillation options

· DB-60 employs a series of 30 brass nozzles to atomize water into droplets 50-200 microns

· 25-horsepower motor that generates 30,000 CFM

· Atomized spray has a throw of more than 200 feet

· Optional 10-horsepower booster pump elevates water pressure as high as 200 psi

· Available with company’s Variable Particle Sizing Technology

More information is available at www.dustboss.com.

Line of full-cone spray nozzles handles capacities from a fraction of a gallon per minute up to hundreds or thousands of gallons per minute. Full-cone nozzles cover a complete circular area and are appropriate for spray applications such as cleaning, cooling or desuperheating, coating, dust suppression and surface spraying. Specific applications include gas cooling, spraying in chemical reactors, cooling or extruded plastic piping, and cleaning in parts washers.

Lechler Inc., (800) 777-2926

http://www.lechlerusa.com/products/full_cone_1.asp

Mexico’s pocito coal mines are in a few ways stuck in the times of yore – the far-off past.

Mined by means of air hammers as well as pickaxes, bereft of dust control or consistent monitoring of volatile methane gas, the pocitos utilize methods old-fashioned within the United States a century before.

Two latest disasters that killed 25 miners exposed the ancient state of affairs. Last week, 13 miners drowned after a mine called La Espuelita flooded and the men couldn’t flee. The catastrophe came four months following another pocito, La Morita No. 49, exploded and killed 12.

Each one of the pocitos, approximately 30 miles apart in Mexico’s solitary coal-mining region, had a solitary vertical bore, violating safety standards adopted within Mexico and other countries long ago.

“Today, American coal mines are required to have a minimum of 2 shafts. That’s something that we learned way back in the 19th century,” said mine engineering Lecturer Chris Haycocks of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Small seams of coal resembling those that pocitos mine are disregarded by up to date American operations, said Jerry Herndon of the United States Mine Health and Safety Academy in West Virginia.

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Reeve Derrick Annable wondered Oct. 21 whether a more affordable product could be applied on Vulcan County gravel roads to allow more ratepayers to pay for dust abatement.

The County did dust abatement on gravel roads this year five to 10 times.

But 245 people in the County of Lethbridge paid for dust abatement this year.

“I think there’s a lot of people who would use (dust abatement) if it was more cost effective,” said Annable at a public works committee meeting last week. He added that few Vulcan County residents could afford the $3,000 to $4,000 price tag.

Coun. Rod Ruark questioned whether the County could afford to subsidize the dust abatement program.

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One topic the county commissioners, city Council members and mayors of Green River and Rock Springs will address at a workshop Nov. 6 is turning what remains of the old highway into a serviceable alternate road between the two cities.

The commissioners began planning the workshop last August.

“We do this kind of work every day,” Rock Springs Mayor Tim Kaumo said. “If we all come together, we can come up with a product that will meet the needs of our community.”

Opinions on how this might be accomplished vary. County Engineer John Radosevich envisions a crushed base surface, with a magnesium chloride treatment for dust control two or three times a year, depending on volume of use. Kaumo thinks milled up asphalt would work better.

This is the type of project SCI thrives on, by utilizing the soils that are native to the area we would be able to transform what is considered an unusable road into a very usable and manageable road for a fraction of the cost they are looking at spending. By the time this is published here we will have contacted the public workers regarding their options. dust Control is just another part of the benefit to using Top-Seal

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“The county roads are in horrendous shape,” said commissioner Cal Johannsen at Wednesday’s county board meeting. “I think it’s all the chloride we’re using. They grade the roads and roll all this muck.”

Commissioners say they’ve never had so many complaints.

“The chloride is designed to solve dry weather problems in the summer,” said board chair Lyle Robinson. “You have a wet fall, it’s a mess.”

McCormick agrees.

“The roads that don’t have chloride on them are in much better shape than the ones that have chloride,” he acknowledged. “You can hands-down see that.

“It’s actually a good tool for dust control and holds the fines (material) together on a gravel road,” McCormick said. “But what happens when you get an unusual fall like this, where you get excessive amounts of rain just steady, every week we’re getting an inch of rain and snow, it keeps the road wetter longer. They stay an oatmeal type consistency, wet, slimy and the road can’t set up. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.”

The SCI dust control option is good for summer and winter

Rain, snow, go away

Come again some other day

– Or not.

That could be Herb McCormick’s mantra these days. He only wishes his probationary period as Hubbard County’s new road maintenance superintendent was trial by fire. He might welcome it.

But four sunny days have buoyed his spirits. His county maintenance crews are finally getting the upper hand on 220 miles of wet, sloppy gravel roads throughout the county.

“We’ve probably bladed more in the last month than we have most of the summer, mainly because the last month and a half has been just horrible,” he said.

He’s hearing from residents, county commissioners and every John Q. Public who thinks he can run a road department better than McCormick. The superintendent politely responds to each e-mail, every angry call. It goes with the turf.

Unusual moisture this fall has left roads in constant need of upkeep. Road crews go out daily, sometimes every day to the same trouble spots to keep the potholes and slush under control.

County Road 2 north of Nevis is one such spot. Wednesday afternoon maintenance operator Ed Branham was blading the roadway, just as he did the previous day when he had to stop.

It was raining and snowing. Again.

And he wasn’t able to get an early start Wednesday due to morning frost.

Mother Nature “just hasn’t given us a chance,” McCormick said. “We bladed every window of opportunity we had. We’ll blade a road, then it’ll turn around and rain for three days. You’ve actually gone backwards,” he said of the frustrating situation he faces.

He’s built a depth chart of road conditions.

“You kind of have to go, ‘Well this road is the worst,’ and kind of go from there,” he said.

County 2 and County Road 23 near Akeley need chronic facelifts.

Other areas in the northeast part of the county that have seen truck traffic due to logging and construction of the Paul Bunyan Trail extension are also in constant need of repair.

“The county roads are in horrendous shape,” said commissioner Cal Johannsen at Wednesday’s county board meeting. “I think it’s all the chloride we’re using. They grade the roads and roll all this muck.”

Commissioners say they’ve never had so many complaints.

“The chloride is designed to solve dry weather problems in the summer,” said board chair Lyle Robinson. “You have a wet fall, it’s a mess.”

McCormick agrees.

“The roads that don’t have chloride on them are in much better shape than the ones that have chloride,” he acknowledged. “You can hands-down see that.

“It’s actually a good tool for dust control and holds the fines (material) together on a gravel road,” McCormick said. “But what happens when you get an unusual fall like this, where you get excessive amounts of rain just steady, every week we’re getting an inch of rain and snow, it keeps the road wetter longer. They stay an oatmeal type consistency, wet, slimy and the road can’t set up. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.”

The salted roads retain moisture and don’t freeze like the roads that haven’t been treated, McCormick says.

But even though it is causing headaches now, the county saves during the summer. The chloride stabilizes gravel roads and makes them nearly maintenance-free.

“We gravel every year on our county roads; we use either Class 5 or Class 1,” said assistant county engineer Jed Nordin. Crews have even spread gravel this fall in the roughest spots.

In 2008 the county spent $285,000 on Class 1; in 2009 expenditures rose to $396,000. But that included township roads, too.

McCormick said township road crews are struggling with the wet conditions, too.

One material the county likely won’t use is crushed concrete. Currently a mountain of the stuff is sitting below the South Transfer Station. The county board voted Wednesday to offer it to the public at $9 per cubic yard.

“People have been asking us about it for weeks,” said solid waste attendant Janelle Pedersen. The mountain, estimated at 46,000 cubic yards, is ground up road construction waste.

It’s been popular for use in driveways, but the county has no experience with it in high traffic areas, so is passing on this backyard bargain.

“I’ve been on previous projects where it was used as a base material and it’s very good but as far as a surface, we’d have to experiment or talk to somebody that has used it,” Nordin said.

“You’ve gotta remember it hardens like concrete,” McCormick said. “If you have potholes in (a road) now you’ve got something you can’t blade so the concrete could actually become worse.

“It probably works good in people’s driveways where there’s not a lot of traffic but if you get that excessive pounding, hard acceleration and braking at intersections, in high impact areas with truck traffic” it may not hold up, he said.

Meanwhile, McCormick will forego deer hunting this weekend to make sure the county’s roads are shipshape.

There’s always time next week after work to see if there are deer around. He and his crew have to keep grading while the sun shines.

http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/event/article/id/20641/

In the construction industry, respiratory disease, often leading to disability or an increased risk of cancer, is a major public health concern. Studies led by Deborah Young-Corbett, a faculty member in Virginia Tech’s School of Construction, have shown that specific types of sanding tools are highly effective in reducing the dust that causes these health hazards, yet the industry’s usage of the available dust control technology remains very low.

To find out why, Young-Corbett conducted follow-up studies with construction firm owners and workers, and identified a number of barriers to the adoption of dust control technology that lead to healthier environments. She said they related to productivity, work quality, and perceptions of benefits and risks.

One of her colleagues, Theodore Koebel of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech has also conducted work in this area and has identified a number of strategies to encourage the construction industry to adopt the new dust control technologies.

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This is just an excerpt from a much longer story dealing with the impact of coal mine and coal mine dust control. the reason for bringing this issue to the forefront here is because many of the coal mine operations that are dealing with dust control should be looking at SCI’s Haul Road dust control products to lower their water consumption. Dust control in the long term can be a source of savings when done right. Not only will you aid the environment by cutting back on coal dust emissions, but you will also lower the cost of legal fees when dealing with the effects of un-controlled dust. here is a short pieces of the full story.

For LJ Turner in Wyoming, coal mining is slowly taking away the vast acreage of his ranch.

"They’ve taken away our land, they’re taking away our water, they’re destroying our air – this is affecting us," said Turner. "We’ve been ranching on government leases since the 1930s, and (mining) has taken 6,000 acres from us so far." Campbell County, Wyoming, where Turner resides, produces a whopping 35% of the nation’s coal from a series of mining complexes that lay waste to miles of pristine prairie.

Turner said thankfully his family has 10,000 deeded acres that they cannot take away, but that land is still affected because the Powder River Basin mining operations are affecting the water.

"They’re depleting the surface aquifers very heavily," he explained. "And the coal bed methane is depleting the deeper aquifers, so we’re losing well water and creek water."

The Powder River Basin includes the nation’s largest surface mine, the Black Thunder Mine. Aquifers and rivers that once irrigated crops and watered cattle are now being used for power plants and dust suppression. Across the prairies and mountains of the Basin, communities have been divided. The region, once home to numerous Native tribes and then family ranches, is now a patchwork of coal mines, power lines, rail lines, and oil and gas wells.

For Otto Braided Hair, it was very important to share the realities of mining to folks who may not think about where their electricity comes from.

"Within minutes of where we live, in almost any direction, there is on-going destruction from coal mining," he said of his home in southeast Montana. "The blues skies are streaked with a brown haze of pollution, and the sacred waters are being threatened and damaged due to coal bed methane development, among other indications of disregard to the environment."

Otto said he wants to encourage people everywhere to think about more than just themselves.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-nilles/the-true-impact-of-coal-m_b_340420.html

The Ministry of Environment and Water has suspended operations of three stone crushers in Ras Al Khaimah for a week for breaching environmental regulations.

Inspectors conducted snap night visits to these quarries in response to complaints by citizens of Shoka area where the three industrial facilities are operating.

Inspectors said the quarries kept dust control systems witched off, a process helps to release dust in air, posing danger to public heath safety.

The stone crushers have been given one week to set everything right in coordination with the local authorities H.E. Dr. Rashid Ahmed bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water, said the inspectors had implemented the cabinet resolution no 20 of 2008 on regulations concerning operations of stone crushers and quarries and transportation of their products and the ministerial resolution no 492.

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Many municipalities are having trouble these days complying with the federal governments mandates on dust control Why? simply put, the banks have cut off credit to the consumers, which in turn has killed the consumer market which has killed many support industries which have ended many jobs thus creating a shortfall in the amount of revenue everyone is taking in… Including local and state governments. Is this accidental, I don’t think so but regardless, Dust control is mandated by the federal government and must be paid for some how. Some would say raise taxes to keep the coffers full. That only takes more away from the people that still have jobs. The end effect is the government gets larger and the citizens supporting said government get poorer. is this the dust road we wish to travel. I don’t think so. SCI can help the local governments by aiding them in meeting these mandated requirements while at the same time conserving their precious resources. This next story is not only about dust Control it is about survival of a small town in the USA.

An increase in the Nye County gas tax from 4 cents per gallon to 7 cents was a necessity in light of a 32 percent decline in gas tax revenues, the Nye County Regional Transportation Commission decided Monday.

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