Hey A123Well met...yes any time questions of conjecture are...

Hey A123

Well met...yes any time questions of conjecture are brought up...Kranky is probably behind it somewhere...problem is you don't get too many straight answers!

Re your question in blockages down the pipe...I have asked same said question to MNM management and others associated with the CHTD tech.

The answer is that blockages can happen - brown coal tends to have lumps of wood, stones, etc. in it that obviously occur naturally.

The pilot plant in Beaconsfield Tassie which went down about 750-800m did block once, but was able to be successfully unblocked with (if I recall correctly) an ordinary garden hose.

The demo plant should actually reduce blockages as the diameters of the pipes will be larger compared to the tubing used in the pilot plant and therefore less likely to cause blockages.

Additionally, my understanding is there is a massive amount of head pressure that will force the slurry down the pipes which will also aid in reducing blockages.


Then there are physical laws of fluids - something to do with the molecules next to the pipe not moving (flowing) as quickly as the molecules towards the centre of the flow and this helps as well (not an engineer, V may be better placed to elaborate on that point).

Of course, until the demo plant is built and operational, anything can happen, but the people I talk too are all pretty confident that up scaling from pilot to commercial demo should be a success as it is just replicating the successful trials at pilot, but on a larger scale.

Hope this helps.

Cheers K