Western Railroad Discussion > Extensive Damage at Searles Valley Minerals, Trona, Ca

Article from the LA Times with photos and descriptions.  Looks to me like the plant may be down for quite a while.  Terrible.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-trona-ridgecrest-20190708-story.html
 

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

Wow, I forgot about the smoke stacks. Chances are since they are now cool they will have to be rebuilt.

I know that the old steel ovens at Kaiser Steel in Fontana always had to have a fire of at least a certain temperature in them 24/7 for if they were to cool down below a certain point, the lining would basically crumble. Or at least that is what I remember what I was told by my dad who delivered petroleum coke there 3 times a day 6 days a week back in the late 70's and into the early 90's.

It's a good article.  The ownership of the plant by an Indian company concerns some residents.  They fear the company may not choose to rebuild.

Considering the potential 250 years of raw materials and an active market, not very likely and a sale
would be more likely.

Out

I worked at Trona back when it was Kerr-McGee Chemical in the 1980's. I was in the shipping department, and remember quite well the work of taking the 100# sacks of product off the conveyor and stacking them inside truck trailers and boxcars - hot work but it paid pretty good then. Now to see the damages to the homes and businesses in Trona, and to read that an Indian company now owns and operates Searles Valley Minerals, I too am wondering if the new owners will step up and get the Trona plant back in operation. As an added question, how did Westend and the Argus Plants fare in the quakes?

tronarail Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I worked at Trona back when it was Kerr-McGee
> Chemical in the 1980's. I was in the shipping
> department, and remember quite well the work of
> taking the 100# sacks of product off the conveyor
> and stacking them inside truck trailers and
> boxcars - hot work but it paid pretty good then.
> Now to see the damages to the homes and businesses
> in Trona, and to read that an Indian company now
> owns and operates Searles Valley Minerals, I too
> am wondering if the new owners will step up and
> get the Trona plant back in operation. As an added
> question, how did Westend and the Argus Plants
> fare in the quakes?

What exactly is the difference in the three plants? All I remember is doing that long hot intra-plant transfer at Trona (sucking fines out of a tank on the end of the dryer drum and blowing them into a 2 hopper rail car), loading a couple loads at Trona for Lever Bros in South Gate and a handful of loads out of West End for P&G in Sacramento. 

I think the West End plant produces sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).

jst3751 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> tronarail Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I worked at Trona back when it was Kerr-McGee
> > Chemical in the 1980's. I was in the shipping
> > department, and remember quite well the work of
> > taking the 100# sacks of product off the
> conveyor
> > and stacking them inside truck trailers and
> > boxcars - hot work but it paid pretty good
> then.
> > Now to see the damages to the homes and
> businesses
> > in Trona, and to read that an Indian company
> now
> > owns and operates Searles Valley Minerals, I
> too
> > am wondering if the new owners will step up and
> > get the Trona plant back in operation. As an
> added
> > question, how did Westend and the Argus Plants
> > fare in the quakes?
>
> What exactly is the difference in the three
> plants? All I remember is doing that long hot
> intra-plant transfer at Trona (sucking fines out
> of a tank on the end of the dryer drum and blowing
> them into a 2 hopper rail car), loading a couple
> loads at Trona for Lever Bros in South Gate and a
> handful of loads out of West End for P&G in
> Sacramento. 

jst3751: It's been 20+ years since I was there, but IIRC, Trona Plant produced Potash, Borax (various types), Boric Acid, and Salt Cake (sodium sulfate) used in detergents. The Westend Plant produced salt cake and I think some sort of lime-based product as company trucks (twin bottom dumps) would deliver limestone rock daily. The Argus Plant (the newest at that time) produced mainly Soda Ash. The soda ash market was a "hot-mover" back then, and with Green River, WY having a reported 4 plants producing soda ash (and UP's steady customer), Kerr-McGee apparently believed the building of a dedicated production facility was a good gamble. I worked only in the Trona Plant, so my explanation of the other plants may not be accurate.

Got this from the Searles Valley Minerals website:

ARGUS, WESTEND AND TRONA

     The Argus facility produces soda ash and preprocesses brine for additional mineral extraction at the Westend facility. Processing may sound complicated yet the soda ash produced is natural. Argus heats trona-bearing brine from a layer 200 ft. to 500 ft. below the lake's surface. It mixes the brine with carbon dioxide - provided in part from our power generation plant - to crystallize it into sodium bicarbonate, which is commonly known as baking soda. Additional carbon dioxide for this process streams in as recycled gas. Processing continues with bleaching and finally recrystallization into dense soda ash. After processing, most of the brine goes back to the lake and the remaining brine goes to the Westend plant where it returns to the lake after further processing.

      The Westend facility takes brine from sodium sulfate-rich layer 20 ft. to 80 ft. below the lake's surface. By introducing heat into the brine layer, we raise the concentration of borates. Westend refrigerates the brine in a two-step process that produces primary borax and sodium sulfate decahydrate. Recrystallizing equipment transforms some of the primary borax into V-BOR ®) pentahydrate borax. The remaining primary borax moves on to the Trona facility to make various borax products.

     The Trona facility houses two production plants. One plant produces boric acid and the other makes borax products. Trona's boric acid plant uses a solvent extraction process to recover boric acid from low-sodium borate brine pumped from a layer 100 ft. to 130 ft. below the lakes's surface. The extraction process won the Miles W. Kirkpatrick Award for outstanding chemical engineering achievement in 1963. The Trona facility is more than its mineral refining and finishing systems. Its historic campus houses most of the administrative offices, warehouse space, and packaging equipment for the three facilities in Searles Valley.

http://www.svminerals.com/Careers1/Production%20and%20Logistics.aspx

 

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/19 21:35 by CimaScrambler.

Thanks