Celanese Studies Cost to Reduce Boiler Emissions in South Carolina

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Celanese Limited (Summit, New Jersey), a subsidiary of Celanese AG (NYSE: CZ) (Kronberg, Germany), is performing equipment studies and technology comparisons that will enable it to reduce its air emissions for a plant located in Rock Hill, South Carolina called the Celriver plant. Celanese operates five (5) coal fired boilers at the Celriver plant that produce approximately 200,000 pounds per hour of process steam each, providing the steam for the production of man made fibers.

Celanese is considering the possible sale of the utility portion of the Celriver plant to a third party that would acquire the utility area, operate it, and sell back to Celanese the process steam and other utility demands needed to operate the fibers production plant. Regardless of who will ultimately own the utility area, modifications to the boilers will be required to meet stringent air emission mandates that will become effective in the year 2006.

Celanese would obviously like to avoid the capital costs estimated at $15 million to retrofit these boilers with additional baghouses and scrubbers necessary to reduce particulates. The boilers already have an electrostatic precipitator system (ESP) in place.