Coal

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Dec. 21 issued its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which will require about 40% of all coal-fired power plants in the U.S. to deploy pollution control technologies to curb emissions of mercury and other air pollutants such as arsenic and cyanide within three years.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit temporarily blocked the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) just two days before it was set to go into effect. The federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to continue administering the previously promulgated Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) until a final decision can be made on the merits of the rule, likely this summer or fall.

The hazards of coal dust accumulation in power plants are familiar to coal-fired plant operators. Operators of plants that burn Powder River Basin coal are particularly aware of necessary housekeeping and fuel-handling practices, but any plant that allows excessive amounts of coal dust to accumulate is playing Russian Roulette with its staff and equipment.

Creating a landfill to hold dry boiler ash is a challenging proposition these days. There’s more to the project than you might imagine, as you’ll learn from this article about the development of a typical new ash landfill.

Rules requiring removal of combustible dust from the workplace will undoubtedly improve worker safety and health. A survey of equipment suppliers finds a variety of dust collection systems are available to meet just about every dust collection need in the power house.

Employees at the 293-MW Muscatine Power & Water plant combine a positive attitude with an aggressive focus on workplace safety, inspired by the motto: “We all can adapt, adopt, and improve to meet the challenges head on to provide our customers with reliable power.” The facility began using Powder River Basin coal in 1993, and the staff have learned effective techniques to use it safely.

Navigant’s Operational Excellence Awards are presented annually to those North American coal-fired generation plants that have demonstrated excellence in cost-efficient reliable plant performance over the preceding five-year period. The data used to select the winners derives from Navigant’s Generation Knowledge Service fossil database.

The POWER editorial staff’s picks for the most significant stories of 2011.

After years of political wrangling, coal-rich Australia in November passed legislation that will require the nation’s top 500 polluters, starting in July 2012, to pay a tax at a fixed price of A$23 (US$23.50) per ton of carbon. The tax increases 2.5% annually until 2015, when an emissions trading program will begin. With the Kyoto […]

Driven by policies to limit carbon emissions, as well as government subsidies, the share of worldwide nonhydro renewable power is set to grow from just 3% in 2009 to 15% in 2035, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts in its recently released World Energy Outlook 2011. Under the same scenario—which assumes that carbon pricing, explicit […]