Aug 22 2010
An entrepreneur from Traverse Bay, Mich., and Michigan Technological University researchers are collaborating on a project to use Upper Michigan’s stamp sand, an unsightly leftover from the mining era, for roofing shingles. Plans are to build a mill to process the stamp sand and supply it to the roofing industry. The mill will be near Gay, Mich., and will employ up to 40 people.
A Michigan Tech materials scientist, Ralph Hodek, and geological mining graduate Domenic Popko also have plans for a longer-term prospect: building a mill to manufacture the shingles themselves, employing up to 300 people.
Michigan Tech alumnus Domenic Popko plans to turn stamp sand wasteland into productive roofing shingle material.
A roofing shingle is 30 percent asphalt and 70 percent rock. To get the rock, typically manufacturers have to develop a quarry and drill, dynamite and crush the rock. They also have to add copper, which retards the growth of algae, moss and lichen.
The stamp sand is especially attractive for the roofing industry because it’s already been mined and crushed, and it contains copper naturally. The initial operation would use a stretch of stamp sand between Gay and Traverse that is owned by the Keweenaw County Road Commission.
There are about 500 million tons of stamp sand in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. The biggest deposit, up to 30 feet deep, is along the shoreline between Gay and Traverse Bay, with even more material on the lake bottom. The sand is primarily basalt with .03 percent copper. That trace amount is all that’s needed to give the material its antimicrobial characteristic.
The Gay sands have been extensively sampled and studied by both the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Both studies concluded that the sand is safe for full-body exposure.