July 03, 2001

WKU Center Working With TVA On Coal Fly Ash Project

Bowling Green, Ky. - The Tennessee Valley Authority has selected Western Kentucky University's Materials Characterization Center for a project that could help the agency save millions of dollars in coal ash disposal costs.

Two undergraduate students, one graduate student and five visiting scholars are working on the "Weathered Coal Fly Ash" project at WKU's Combustion Laboratory and Coal and Fuel Laboratory. Western's Materials Characterization Center received $65,910 for the analysis work.

Fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion, may contain elevated levels of leachable toxic elements, which may raise environmental concerns if the fly ash is not deposited in a proper holding facility, according to Dr. Wei-Ping Pan, chemistry professor.

In TVA's current disposal method, the fly ash is covered with a clay cap to minimize leaching, but Dr. Pan said this method is expensive and the cost is passed on to consumers.

Dr. Pan said a recent study suggests that a clay layer may form when the coal ash particles are "weathered" in a confined area, and thereby cap the ash deposit.

"The major goal of the TVA/WKU project is to determine whether or not a clay layer has formed on ash particles from several ash deposits that have been exposed to the environment over different periods of time," he said.

If this is shown to be true, TVA could meet its regulatory requirements and save millions of dollars in materials, equipment and labor associated with ash disposal area reclamation, he said.

Working on the project through Sept. 30 are Tommy Gregory of Lafayette, Tenn.; Pauline Hack of Morgantown; Zhijiang Tu, Xiao Peng and Jun Zhang, all of China; Tzu-Heng Ko and Ming-Jaan Ho, both of Taiwan; and Sreedhar Oduru of India.
The Materials Characterization Center, directed by Dr. John T. Riley, is housed at the WKU South Campus and is part of Western's Applied Research and Technology Program.

For more information, contact Dr. Wei-Ping Pan at (270) 780-2532. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.