buy buy buy, page-56

Hi Kranky,

The Paragraph below is from Exergens site. Its Been stated in quite a few places that a 150km slurry pipe is the method of transportation to be used.

'The CHTD plant will produce 12m tonnes per annum of enhanced Exergen brown coal and 16 gigalitres per annum of industrial / agricultural quality water. The treated Exergen coal will be transported in a slurry form, in a new pipeline constructed by the consortium, to a location adjacent, at The Port of Hastings Authority on the Mornington Peninsula.
A Final De-watering Facility will remove excess water prior to the finished product being loaded via covered conveyors onto ships for export.'

Looks like they need to have some big ass plant both ends of the line; some unreal horse power to push the slurry that length with numerous heavy duty pump station at every few km along that long. Maintenance costs!!!!! Maintenance cost would be colossal to say the least.. Can you imagine the abrasion the pipes would endure with the brown coal volumes that have been stated being pumped through. Desalination plants have massive maintenance costs with pumping water through pipes, truly massive and these guys are talking about pushing slurry 150km in underground pipes. Another thing....running the pipe as the crow flys ; I'm sure it fairly enevitable that it would be passing through a fair few acreage of private land. Land owners don't really bow down to easily when it comes to having easeways directed through their land.

Look to be honest I don't pay much attention to Exergen; so if their infrastructure plan has changed, then I'm a bit behind the times; but that Paragraph is still up on the energex site; and based on that the organisation, planning, negotiating, property purchase, approvals to cut across roads etc etc for a line that length will take years; they say it will be constructed by a consortium ; who is in that consortium, has it been organised; I'd doubt it as all the planning applications would have to be in an advanced state to get that rolling. For Exergen needs to nail all that down and the pipe path needs to be definitive obviously to start; it's not. Years away.....more like a decade, infrastructure and maintenance will dwarf the plant costs.

How long is the coldry plant enclosure going to be....even if it's 1km long which I doubt; it's considerably shorter than the sprawl that Exergen looks like its going to need