The St. Nicholas Cogeneration plant was constructed in
1989 to convert the culm bank from the long abandoned
St. Nick Breaker. This is done by removing the culm
with large earth movers and dumping it onto conveyors
going to the small breaker. This small breaker cleans
the culm and separates the coal from rock. It also
removes large pieces of rock and discards them to a
pile outside. Then the culm is sent to the plant on a
conveyor that is almost a mile long at a rate of 425
tons per hour. Upon reaching the plant the culm is
pulverized to ash and sent through a network of pipes
until it is injected into the furnace at a rate of 150
tons per hour. This furnace has a temperature on
average of 1,575 degrees. It heats water brought to
the plant from several sources. About 30% of this
water is from the abandoned Maple Hill shaft. The rest
is brought from nearby dams. The mine water is passed
through several filters until it is as good, or better
than tap water. This water is passed into a boiler at
1600 gallons per minute heated by the furnace and
turned into steam. This steam passes through pipes to
reach the turbine-generator which creates about 92
megawatts of power. 12 megawatts comes back to power
the plant and the rest is sold to power companies.
This means that the plant is completely self-running.
There is 63,000 gallons of water per minute pumped
throughout the plant for cooling, most of it is for
condensing the steam that went through the turbine
turning it back into water so it can go back into the
boiler. There are about 60 employees at the plant.
Harrison Kranch who is a control room operator
invited Chris to the plant for a tour. This is what He
had to say about the trip,
"When Carissa and I went to the St Nick breaker for
the second time we saw this plant from the culm bank
while taking pics of the breaker. I thought it was
pretty cool to see something like this in action but
never thought months later I would be going on a tour
inside! I met Har on a Yahoo group for anthracite
discussion. He told me of his interest on investigating
abandoned mines in the Mahanoy city area. After much
discussion and a few trips down there with him he
informed me of his position at the plant and offered a
tour. Now I couldn't give up this opportunity! So one
real cold afternoon I headed down for my adventure.
Upon reaching the cogen plant with Har, I couldn't
believe the size. It's much bigger close up. There were
many things to see. First we went to the locker room
to get my hard hat and safety glasses. After that we went off
to the water treatment plant to see the high velocity
water pumps and related plumbing. Har told me of a
time when one of the pipes burst and there was 3 feet
of water in the room within a matter of seconds. Next
we went into the main plant to see many conveyors and
the furnace. There were pipes all over of very large
diameter. Har then showed me a sight glass where you
can monitor the inside of the furnace. This was one of
my favorite parts. After the main plant we drove along
the almost-mile-long conveyor to the small breaker at
the culm bank. The breaker was my favorite part. There
are conveyors moving culm, or "dirt", as referred to by
the workers. The dirt then moves into crushers and
separators just as it did 100 years ago. The coal is
then separated and washed before it is sent to the
plant. This was the conclusion of my tour so we went
back to the locker room to drop off the safety
equipment. Now that I'm in the mood, lets go find some
mines Har." -Chris
