Plant Design

It’s déjà synfuels all over again. With crude oil prices seemingly interminably pegged at over $60 a barrel, the old, beguiling notion of turning coal into liquid fuel — a task accomplished by the Nazis in the 1940s and the South Africans in the 1970s and 1980s — is once again front-page political news in […]

Money is always spent with the best intentions. We look for the best deal, often identifying it by the lowest price. Sometimes, our choice works out and we save money and get a great product. When it doesn’t work out, however, we find ourselves spending more and more money to repair or replace our "great […]

During 2005, about 150 million tons of coal were transported to power plants by hopper barges plying U.S. inland waterways. With coal-fired plants expected to continue producing 50% of America’s electricity, coal barge traffic is not likely to fall off. In fact, it may increase, for two reasons. One is cost. Shipping coal by barge […]

The Fayette Power Project (FPP, aka the Sam K. Seymour Power Station) is a three-unit, coal-fired generating plant sited near La Grange, Texas (Figure 1). Units 1 and 2, each with a nominal rating of 600 MW, are co-owned by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) and Austin Energy (AE). LCRA is a conservation and […]

Reducing NOx emissions from large utility coal-fired boilers has been a primary focus of the U.S. power generation industry since passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act and subsequent legislation. By the early 1990s, nearly all such boilers had installed some form of low-NOx burner (LNB) technology and/or overfire air (OFA) — the least expensive […]

Using a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system to reduce the emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from a coal-fired power plant is rapidly becoming the norm, rather than the exception. But for many plants, adding an SCR system has unintended consequences: greater oxidation of sulfur dioxide (SO2) to sulfur trioxide (SO3), and a rise in stack […]

Dominion Generation (DG) has installed selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems on many of the large coal-fired generating units it operates. The catalyst used has an SO2 to SO3 oxidation rate of about 1%, which roughly doubles the SO3 concentration at the outlet of the boiler economizers. The magnitude of the increase was proportional to the […]

Flyash and condensed sulfur trioxide (SO3) are the major components of flue gas that contribute to the opacity of a coal plant’s stack emissions (stack opacity). Estimates are that 75% to 85% of bituminous coal-fired plants with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and/or wet flue gas desulfurization (FGD) systems are likely to produce enough SO3 vapor […]

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) have elbowed their way into the nation’s lexicon with the rise in concern over climate change. But few of the journalists who are hyping global warming have taken the trouble to learn the ins and outs of producing affordable electricity from coal. Citizens of the industrialized world now wring their […]

The big buzz still echoing through world of coal-fired generation is the move by two big-bucks private equity investors to take TXU Corp. off the public market, including scuttling announced plans for eight new pulverized coal – fired plants. That leaves alive plans for three new units at TXU’s existing Sandow and Oak Grove sites. […]