Achieving Sustained Compliance in Waste-to-Energy Facility

Summary

Poor ESP performance created challenges for maintaining consistent emissions compliance. Since the repairs needed were extensive, and shutdown time would not allow for all work to be completed, a phased plan was put in place. The results were consistent compliance, sustained over time.

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Full Story

A Waste-to-Energy plant was struggling with emissions.

Waste-to-Energy plants use refuse as a fuel to generate steam and electricity.  These plants typically use stoker fired boilers along with particulate capture devices such as electrostatic precipitators (ESP) for PM emission control.

Poor ESP performance created challenges for maintaining consistent emissions compliance.  In this type of application, corrission results from the fuel source.  As a result, they were operating under a consent decree and had made a commitment to the State to implement a solution.  The plant brought in Neundorfer to assess the equipment and identify areas that would have the most impact on performance and reliability. Since the repairs needed were extensive, and shutdown time would not allow for all repairs and internal replacements to be made, a phased plan was put in place to repair the most critical areas first.

After the first, most critical fields were repaired, performance improved dramatically, and emission excursions were minimized during normal operation.  The plant’s regularly scheduled testing was performed, revealing a gain in previously lost operating margin.

The plant continued to follow the improvement plan in subsequent outages, and the state removed their consent decree sooner than expected.  This systematic improvement program allowed them to consistently meet compliance.  The facility will continue with it’s repair plan in order to act in good faith and assure they have reliable equipment for the future.