In Clearfield County, River Hill coal says green mining is not an oxymoron

Keystone Edge, 2/18/2010

Call it a mixed marriage. River Hill Coal Company in Clearfield County is creating unlikely partnerships with three renewable energy outfits in western Pennsylvania. Together, they’re hoping to make River Hill’s operations cleaner, more efficient, and cheaper.

River Hill surface mines old sites, producing over 20,000 tons of metallurgical coal each month. The high-quality product is used to melt steel. Company vice president Jacob Handler sought partners than would help his family-owned company find cheaper fuel for its furnaces, a safer method of drying coal, and smarter solutions for remediating old mines.

For the first problem, River Hill will work with Optimus, a Pittsburgh biofuels firm that uses canola and waste oil. River Hill will replace the $2-a-gallon diesel currently used in its furnaces with the recycled 50-cent variety from the Pittsburgh biofuels start-up.

Active methods of removing moisture from coal—including electric heat—pose safety hazards for mining companies. Hanchar says that Epiphany Labs, which has also developed cost-effective clean water technologies, will work with the firm on a solar array to dry coal passively. A standard 10-ton load could be reduced to eight percent moisture levels in a week to ten days.

Finally, River Hill will use technologies developed by Pittsburgh Gtech to remediate mining sites. Planting sunflowers actively removes toxins from the soil, and Hanchar points out another advantage: plant roots soak up water before it leaches underground to cause acid mine runoff. Hanchar says the company will plant 20 acres this spring. It remediates about 150 acres of roughly 1,000 mined acres annually.

Hanchar says the company is fielding calls from interested companies "whose images aren’t pristine.” But he predicts "it will come down to what is economically feasible. After a year, once we’ve done the first round of work , we will be able to market it to the industry a little bit more."

Source: Jacob Hanchar, River Hill
Writer: Chris O’Toole