hello i l ive in Central Pa where there ar a couple of companys that ship pulverized coal in covered hoppers the products are used in manufacturing as fillers in paints, rubber etc, the on in muncy pa is keystone filler and mnf. they load 54’ ps covered hoppers and 50’ FMC grain covered hoppers, most are very heavily weathered Norfolk Western cars, my question is are these 54’ covered hoppers 100 ton covered hoppers, would these be filled to capacity with pulverized coal or half full?, why would they not use the short 2 bay covered hoppers?
To answer the second half of your question first, a shipper who is being charged by the carload will use the biggest, highest-capacity cars the loading and unloading facilities can handle.
If you have access to the cars (access being defined as visible from a public road or with management permission) check the CAPY and LD. LT. weights. If the volume of the car is more than the volume of commodity that would max the load limit, the car will be partially empty - but, with a covered hopper, how would you tell?
I would be unsurprised to learn that those cars are in captive service. Powdered coal is nasty stuff, and not easily cleaned from the discharge fittings of a covered hopper. Putting a car into pulverized coal service would be rather like putting a car into hide service - but at least it wouldn’t attract its weight in flies.
I don’t know what the density of the coal is, but they have probably loaded the cars to weight capacity but not cubic capacity so the cars would be “half full”. It may be that the coal is light enough that they can’t get 100 tons in a short two bay hopper. An older covered hopper has less capacity than a new one so the older covered hoppers would be “surplus” for grain, but perfect for a denser commodity. There wouldn’t be any point to building a specific car for this commodity when there are plenty of existing cars that could carry the load.
I would sure imagine they would have to have some kind of system for fluidizing the the coal, just to keep it moving. When we would try to unload PRB coal on the Great Lakes ships the coal would often plug up and you would have to beat the hopper or break it up with a stick to get it to flow. I would hate to try and deal with damp bug dust.
That goes with what I was thinking. My brother once worked “in coal” and pulverised coal was always “blown” in air pressure systems. This meant that, being enclosed in pipes all the time, it was pretty clean stuff to use… except when it leaked…
I’ve been working with a cold in the head for days so I’ve not got back to this thread… but it has bugged me [banghead] I’ve been wondering about the quoted use of pulverised coal as a “filler”. This seems weird to me. Coal is (pretty obviously) a fuel. It also tends to be friable as well as combustible so I can’t see it as a filler… maybe because of ignorance.
Given the reference to tyre making I’m wondering if the hoppers are carrying carbon black. That filthy stuff is used in tyres… and carried in covered hoppers… and they have specialised outlets…
Another thing that this thread brought to my adled brain was the use of car shakers to unplug covered hoppers. A year or two ago someone (maybe me) started a thread on these… Anyone know where it is please? the information was very interesting. It seems that the shakers are pretty common to unloading points but hardly ever modelled. IIRC no-one makes a commercially available model or kit (H0 please)!
They list the specific gravity as 1.22. That means its density is approximately 77.104 pounds/cubic foot. It would not cube out in any Trinity or ARI cars currently being made, which ranges down to 3200 cubic feet. The photograph shows car in the 4750 cubic foot range, so they are not completely filling the cars.
The covered hoppers shown in pictures on the company’s home page would not be pressurized or have fluidized unloading. They look to be “normal” covered hopper with trough loading hatches and the type that would have gravity outlets.
I would guess you hit it on the head with it being carbon black, (equally as nasty to deal with) and if I recall mildly radioactive. not very sure on that one. but that would make much more sense, it would be dry and flow much easier.
Its not carbon black, its pulverized coal. Different commodities. Different cars. Carbon black is shipped in fluidized air slides. From the photos of the plant the covered hoppers being loaded are the same type a grain hoppers. Carbon black is not handled as a radioactive material. Probably your concrete sideway or basement walls or the granite countertops in your kitchen are as or more radioactive than carbon black.
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