In the near future, limestone will begin moving from the Montana Limestone Company’s quarry in Warren, Mont., to Basin Electric Power Cooperative’s Leland Olds Station near Stanton, N.D.
At a June 2008 meeting, the Dakota Coal Company Board of Directors made the decision that will help make that limestone movement happen, with the approval of the construction of machinery to streamline transporting limestone over Hwy. 310 and loading it into railcars for transport.
According to company spokesman Mary Klecker-Green, a truck dump and unit train load-out facility is being constructed near Montana Limestone Company’s fine grind plant at Warren. Limestone will be brought from the quarry to the truck dump and then travel through a tube over U.S. Hwy. 310 before being dumped at a dual railcar load-out on the west side of the highway.
The conveyor is capable of delivering up to 600 tons of limestone per hour. The unit train will deliver 100,000 tons of limestone in the spring of 2010 and 100,000 tons in the fall to the Leland Olds Station for use in a wet limestone scrubber project, which will remove sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant’s flue gas, said Klecker-Green. Montana Limestone Company is a subsidiary of Dakota Coal Company.
To improve public safety, the new truck dump was placed so that limestone haul trucks used for loading railcars will not have to drive across U.S. Highway 310, according to Klecker-Green.
On May 20, a contractor installed the overhead conveyor tube for the project. The tube is 85 feet long, weighs 65,000 pounds and is the first of its kind in the state, according to a Montana Limestone press release. It has an inside diameter of 9 feet, 9 inches and encloses a 36-inch-wide conveyor and walkway. The tube was lifted into place with two large cranes while traffic on U.S. Highway 310 was briefly detoured around the lift site.
During the summer, the same unit train will move coal from the Powder River Basin to Leland Olds. This schedule was developed to reduce capital investment by sharing the train, Klecker-Green said.
A long and short railroad spur has been installed, along with the dual railcar load-out, to accommodate limestone loading for both power plant scrubber rock and sugar beet factories.
Benetech/Millcreek Engineering was selected to engineer, design and construct the new facility. Construction started in August of 2008 with work mainly concentrating on the railroad spurs, truck dump and haul-road.
Work resumed during the spring of 2009, after a brief winter break, and is now entering the structural steel erection phase. Benetech/Millcreek Engineering expects the majority of work to be completed by the fall of 2009.
Since the fall of 2008, Dakota Coal Company, Benetech/Millcreek Engineering and the Montana Department of Transportation have been working together to permit and design the overhead conveyor tube highway crossing.