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Just two weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew its smog rule, the agency confirmed it would not meet a Sept. 30, 2011, deadline for issuing proposed New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new, modified, and existing power plants. The agency did not specify a new deadline for proposing the rule.

President Obama has scuttled the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) smog rule, saying that he had underscored the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty. The decision has dealt a blow to environmental groups—which are contemplating legal action—and won the Democratic president praise from Republicans and industry groups.

Pulverizers prepare the raw fuel by grinding it to a desired fineness and mixing it with the just the right amount of air before sending the mixture to boiler burners for combustion. In Part I of this three-part report, we examined the essentials of pulverizer design and performance.  In the second part, we discuss the importance of fuel fineness. In the final article, we will discuss the importance of air and fuel measurement.

Utilizing engineering ingenuity and today’s developing computational fluid dynamics tools, a new classifier design is now available that significantly improves fineness from pulverizers without the heavy costs associated with dynamic classification or any downsides on pulverizer capacities, maintenance, and parasitic power.  Instead, operational flexibility and improved emission control options are enhanced.

The DOE on Friday finalized a partial guarantee for up to a $350 million loan guarantee to support a geothermal power project sponsored by Ormat Nevada. The 113-MW project comprises three geothermal power facilities and could increase Nevada’s geothermal power production by nearly 25% the DOE said.

The renewed flurry of loan guarantees from the DOE this past week included a finalized partial guarantee for a $168.9 million loan to Granite Reliable Power for a 99-MW wind generation project that is expected to become New Hampshire’s largest wind farm.

The Energy Department on Tuesday issued a Record of Decision (ROD) that could allow $450 million of federal funding to be used to help build Summit Texas Clean Eneryg’s 400-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant planned for construction just west of Midland-Odessa,Texas.

Dominion, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Virginia Tech, Alstom Power, and maritime engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol last week received a two-year $500,000 grant from the DOE to seek out ways to reduce the cost of offshore wind generation by at least 25%.

Progress Energy Carolinas will officially shut down its 177-MW coal-fired W.H. Weatherspoon Power Plant near Lumberton, N.C., at the end of the month—the first such retirement under the utility’s fleet-modernization program that includes disassembly of nearly 30% of the firm’s coal generating fleet in North Carolina.

A new standard devised by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in response to the February 2010 Kleen Energy Systems power plant explosion prohibits the use of flammable gas as a cleaning agent for cleaning the interior of pipes—the practice thought to have caused the blast that killed six workers in Middletown, Conn., and injured nearly 50 others.