Coal Washery – Section III

Section III – Unwashed Coal Bin

Unwashed Coal Bin

At the very top of the structure is the Unwashed Coal Bin – this receives the coal from the breaker via a conveyor belt. It will contain crushed and broken coal, shale, dirt and clay. A door and chute will allow the material to be processed as needed.

In “Coke: A treatise on the manufacture of coke and other prepared fuels ..” there is an extensive section on the Stewart Coal Washery which I used to develop this model. In the text it states “One man on the platform of the washer can attend to a five-jig washer, washing 1,800 tons per day of 10 hours….”

Since I am modeling a single jig-tank structure that should mean that it could wash 360 tons in 10 hours. The question that comes to mind is .. what is the capacity of the Unwashed Coal Bin?

So the bin can hold about 35 tons. That means the bin would have to be completely refilled in those 10 hours.  The Mimesis 30×40 breaker has a capacity of 83 tons per hour so it could re-fill the bin in 25 minutes. I suspect that in reality it would simply be refilled as coal was cycled through the washery. Since this is taking place c.1905 I suspect that someone would have to be up on top to operate the conveyor belt. It might make sense to have a bin holding mine run coal, slate to feed the breaker – might have made sense to switch on the conveyor belt and then the breaker. I think that again it being c.1905 this may have involved a lot of arm waving between operators.