The North Dakota Industrial Commission and the North Dakota Development Fund are dropping a combined $10 million on a plan to ship Mesabi Range Minnesota iron ore mine waste, whatever that is, to the Coal Creek Power Station 50 miles north of Bismarck from a storage area near Calumet, MN, 434 miles to the east. The power house is fired by lignite and is the largest generator of electricity in the Flickertail State, its two generators producing almost 1.2 gigawatts.
willistonherald.com
With a stack height of about 650 feet, the plant produces over 4 million tons of ash annually, 3rd most of any such facility in the country.
The project, planned by new owner Rainbow Energy, will use the plant's power to convert natural gas to hydrogen and CO2, fueling the furnaces that will produce pig iron for Scranton Holding/North American Iron. The CO2 produced in the process will be sequestered underground in the area.
The sequence of events in the pig iron story will mean the use of first the energy in lignite, then the electrical energy of the power plant itself, followed by raw material energy of natural gas, and then the energy of the hydrogen produced. Of course, as usual, a number of well-paid jobs will result. But a minimum of the dread CO2 molecules will be released and North Dakota and its neighbors will likely enjoy the Siberian climate of the area that has been the case since glacial Lake Agassiz drained 8200 years ago.
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