The Brazeau Collieries cleaning plant is where crushed coal was washed to reduce impurities, producing what was called cleaned coal as opposed to raw coal. Clean coal burned more efficiently and produced less ash. This wet-cleaning process involved a lot of water. Quite a few controls helped the team manage the water which was carefully balanced in volume, density and pulsation. Flowing through special jigs, in addition to cleaning the coal, the water separated usable material from reject material, without damaging the desirable coal or getting overloaded with sludge. For a seemingly low-tech industrial operation, this set of pipes and many other things were pretty well tuned on a continuous basis.
Well-tuned Set of Pipes, Nordegg
Royce Howland Photography 