Ameren Moves Forward with Environmental Upgrade Projects at Plants in Missouri and Illinois

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Having announced last year its plans to invest well over one billion dollars to improve air quality at its plants in Missouri and Illinois, Ameren Corporation (NYSE:AEE) (Saint Louis, Missouri) is moving forward with projects at three of its coal-fired power plants. The initial work is scheduled to take place at Sioux Power Station near West Alton, Missouri, Duck Creek Power Station near Canton, Illinois and the Coffeen Power Station in Coffeen, Illinois.

At Sioux, the company will add wet flue gas desulfurization scrubbers on both Units 1 & 2. The Sioux Power Station is home to two Babcock & Wilcox coal-fired cyclone boilers each capable of producing 3.29MM lbs/hr steam. Sioux Unit 1 started commercial operation in 1967 followed by Unit 2 in 1968. The boilers also utilize tire chips and petroleum coke as supplemental fuel. Ameren contracted with Hitachi Power Systems America, Limited (Basking Ridge, New Jersey), a subsidiary of Hitachi, Limited (NYSE:HIT) (Tokyo, Japan), to supply the scrubbers. Engineering services for the project are being provided by Sargent and Lundy, LLC (Chicago, Illinois) and the general contractor is MC Industrial, Incorporated (Saint Louis, Missouri). Preliminary site preparation work has started and installation of equipment is expected to begin during the first or second quarter of next year. Completion of the project and tie-in outages are scheduled for late 2008 and early 2009.

The Coffeen Power Station will have two Hitachi wet flue gas desulfurization scrubbers installed. This station started commercial operation of Unit 1 in 1965. Unit 1 is a 389-megawatt unit containing a 2.5MM lbs/hr Babcock and Wilcox cyclone boiler. Later in 1972, the 616-megawatt Unit 2 started operation with a 4.159MM lbs/hr Babcock & Wilcox Cyclone boiler. Engineering for the scrubber project at Coffeen is well underway by Sargent and Lundy. Kick off for civil site prep is expected to begin before the end of the year, with installation of equipment planned to begin by mid-2007. The general contractor for this project is Alberici Corporation (Saint Louis, Missouri) and project completion and tie-in outages are planned for late 2009.

At Duck Creek, preliminary site work is underway to replace an existing Riley modular wet flu gas desulfurization scrubber with a Hitachi wet scrubber and to replace an existing electrostatic precipitator on Unit 1. Duck Creek commenced commercial operation in 1976 with a 3MM lbs/hr Riley Stoker boiler powering a 441-megawatt steam turbine generator. Equipment installation for this project is expected to begin in the spring of 2007 with the tie-in outage scheduled for late 2008. The general contractor for the Duck Creek project is Graycor Industrial Contractors, Incorporated (Homewood, Illinois), and as with the projects at Sioux and Coffeen, Sargent and Lundy will provide engineering services for the project.

The projects at these three plants are expected to be just the beginning of environmental compliance spending for Ameren. In addition to these three plants, the company has five other base load coal-fired plants in Illinois and three other coal-fired plants in Missouri. Preliminary studies are underway at a number of these plants to determine the best approach to reduce SO2, NOx, particulate and mercury emissions.

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