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Welcome to SmartAsh.info.  Our goal is to provide an open forum for the presentation and discussion of coal ash news items, science, uses, and other topics that may affect you, your area or profession, or others you may know.  The site does not focus on any particular sources of information - instead, its goal is to present and facilitate discussion of facts, regardless of where they may come from.

Competing Forces Clash Over Coal Ash

 (EnergyBiz 1-24-2012) Issue Tied To Presidential Outcome. Two competing forces with regard to how coal ash is regulated are headed for a collision. Environmentalist groups have just said that they would sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force prompt action while U.S. lawmakers from coal-producing states are working to head off those attempts.

New Research on the Environmental Impact of Concrete

(Concrete Helper 1-16-2012) Nearly 500 representatives from industry, government and academia convened at MIT in August for a day-long symposium on the environmental impacts of concrete – a topic of no small importance, given that concrete is the most widely used man-made material on earth and that its use contributes about 5% of global CO2 emissions.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS STADIUM RECEIVES LEED PLATINUM CERTIFICATION

 (Construction & Demolition Recycling 1-3-2012)  Apogee Stadium is first collegiate stadium to receive highest certification from U.S. Green Building Council. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has awarded the University of North Texas’ (UNT) Apogee Stadium in Denton, Texas, LEED Platinum Certification, making it the first newly constructed collegiate football stadium in the U.S. to achieve the highest level of LEED certification, says the university. 

Fly ash is being turned into a solidifying agent for drilling waste pits

 (Bismarck Tribune/ Sunday, November, 13, 2011)

There's an intersection in North Dakota, where coal meets oil, that leads to thousands of pits out in the oil patch.

Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act

(Library of Congress 10-18-2011)

TVA’s Defense Against Coal Ash Spill Lawsuits Goes to Trial in Knoxville Federal Court

 (Washington Post 9-20-2011) A federal judge on Thursday began hearing from both sides in the legal battle over whether the Tennessee Valley Authority should pay damages for a huge coal ash spill that fouled a riverside community.
 
At a brief opening session, TVA attorney Edwin Small told U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan that TVA would land a helicopter in downtown Knoxville if he wanted to visit the spill site.
 

Utilization of Fly Ash from Biomass and Biomass-Coal

 (Biomass Power and Thermal 9-20-2011) Biomass fuel is being incorporated by some coal-based power plants as an alternative to cocombustion or cogasification with coal. This cofiring strategy has demonstrated reduced sulfur and nitrogen emissions and could be used as a strategy to reduce the net carbon dioxide (CO2) emission impact of a power plant. Some consider the combustion of biomass to be essentially CO2-neutral because although the biomass produces CO2 on combustion, CO2 is taken up by the plant during its growth.
 

Report: Road & Bridge Building Costs Will Increase By More than $100B Over 20 Years Without Coal Fly Ash

(Equipment World 9-12-2011) The cost to build roads, runways and bridges would increase by an estimated $104.6 billion throughout the next 20 years if coal fly ash is no longer available as a transportation construction building material, according to a new study by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association’s Transportation Development Foundation (ARTBA-TDF).
 

Paving the Way to Greenhouse Gas Reductions

(MIT News 8-29-2011) Concrete is one of the most extensively used materials worldwide — on average, more than two tons per year of the rock-like stuff is produced for every man, woman and child on Earth, making its use second only to water. And that vast amount of new concrete is responsible for somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it a significant target for improvements.