Abstract
Coal is considered one of the major sources of power-generation in Malaysia. The Coal-fired power plant is a kind of power plant that uses coal to generate electricity. The globally increasing demand for energy has led to an increase in the number of installation of coal-fired power plants. With the growth in coal-burning power plants, massive amounts of coal bottom ash have been produced as waste material. This article presents an experimental study on the geotechnical characteristics of Tanjung bin coal bottom ash and compares them with the properties of the natural granular soil focusing on the physical and mechanical characteristics namely; grain size distribution, specific gravity, compaction, permeability, shear strength, and relative density. Results revealed that the Tanjung bin bottom ash has geotechnical properties similar to the natural granular material, therefore it can be utilized as a substitute material to sand in several geotechnical application.
Highlights
Tanjung Bin power plant is one of the biggest coal-fired thermal plants in Malaysia with a generation capacity of 2100 MW(700 MW × 3units) and coal-burning of 18,000 tonnes per day [1]
Based on the Unified Soil Classification System (USCS), Tanjung bin bottom ash can be categorized as well-graded sand (SW), while from AASHTO system it can be classified as A-1a
The specific gravity of Tanjung bin coal bottom ash was determined according to British Standard
Summary
Tanjung Bin power plant is one of the biggest coal-fired thermal plants in Malaysia with a generation capacity of 2100 MW(700 MW × 3units) and coal-burning of 18,000 tonnes per day [1]. The coal-burning of the Tanjung bin power plant daily produce about 180 tonnes of bottom ash and 1,620 tonnes of fly ash. This coal ash usually disposed of in open dumping sites near to the thermal power plant and it becomes a considerable concern to the power plant company because of the needs of ash storage space [1]. The authors performed X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence analysis on some samples obtained from Tanjung bin plant; they found that the main constituents are Silica (SiO2) with percentage of 33.7%, 42.7%, 45.3 and 46.6%, Alumina (Al2O3) with percentage of 12.9%, 23.0%, 18.1 and 26.1% and Iron oxide (Fe2O3) with percentage of 6.98%, 17.0%, 19.84 and 12.4%. This paper intended to study the geotechnical properties of Tanjung bin bottom ash in particular physical and mechanical properties and compared them with natural granular material
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