Clinker Bins

A row of clinker bins at White Bay Power Station sits below the boiler firing chambers, the steel-walled hoppers that collected bottom ash and clinker as it fell out of the boilers. The bins are heavy fabricated steel, lined with abrasion plate where the falling clinker worked against the inner walls. Each bin tapers to a discharge gate at the bottom, with the conveyor route below carrying the material out to the ash disposal area. Clinker residue sits in the bottoms of the bins where the last operating load remained at closure: dark, fused, glassy chunks of the high-temperature waste from coal combustion.

Clinker is the harder, partly-fused waste from coal-fired boilers, distinct from the finer fly ash that goes up the flue. At a working power station, the bottom-ash bins below the boilers held the clinker before the conveyor system moved it to the ash disposal area. White Bay's clinker bins ran continuously across the working life of the plant from 1917 to Christmas Eve 1983. After closure the system was shut down. The bins, the discharge gates, and the conveyor route below remain in place. The clinker residue at the bottom of each bin is the last batch from the final firing.