Citizens Gas & Coke Utility to Shutdown Coke Manufacturing Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). For eleven months Citizens Gas & Coke Utility of Indianapolis, Indiana has tried to find a way to keep the plant open. After 99 years of service, the company says foreign competition spearheads the closure of the coke manufacturing plant (a fuel used by foundries and steel mills). High environmental costs and declines in heavy industry are also being citied as reasons behind the closing of the coke plant. The company expects to close the plant in stages over the next few months.

To produce coke, a raw coal mixture is poured into ovens 50 feet wide and 15 feet tall, heated to over 1800° Fahrenheit and the prepared coal is "coked," or heated in an oxygen-free atmosphere until all volatile components in the coal evaporate baked in the absence of air. The process takes from 26 to 30 hours. The Coke produced is then cooled and sized according to where and how it will be used.

All attempts to sell the plant have proved unsuccessful at this juncture. Interest in purchasing the plant was running high with almost two dozen firms expressing different levels of interest. DTE Energy, the Michigan parent of Detroit Power & Light had been involved in purchase talks for months. But to no avail, Citizens Gas & Coke Utility will have to close the plant as no agreement could be reached.

In 1909, coke and coke oven gas production began and has continued to the present. Coke production continued at the original Langsdale site until 1956. After that, production was moved to the current Prospect Street plant that has supported two coke batteries with a total of 70 ovens. In 1979, the construction of its last coke oven battery, known as Battery One or K-79, at the Prospect plant was completed. It cost approximately $90 million with a third of the cost going to increase and improve environmental controls. This was the last battery built in the United States by a merchant coke producer (not a steel company). The battery is considered to be the most environmentally sound operation of its kind in this country.

Workers were notified in February that plant operations could cease. The notification was made in accordance with a federal law that requires 60-day notification of possible employee layoffs. Now, after close to 100 years, the ovens will be cold and the doors will be locked. Three hundred employees are about to see a dynasty end as they receive outplacement services along with severance pay and paid health benefits. All future maintenance and capital projects planned for the plant have been cancelled. As of now, the future of the 120-acre plant has not been determined.

Coke production in the United States increased steadily between 1880 and the early 1950s, peaking at 72 million tons in 1951. In 1976, the United States ranked number two in the world with production that reached 52.9 million tons. By 1990, the United States produced 27 million tons and was ranked fourth in the world. A continuing gradual decline in production has occurred as production has decreased from 22 million tons in 1997 to 16.8 million tons in 2002. Last year (2006) the total reached just over 16 million tons.

But all is not bleak for the coke production in the United States. Sun Coke Company (Knoxville, Tennessee), a subsidiary of Sunoco (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), is in the permitting stages for a 660,000 ton a year, $340 million plant to be built next to the U.S. Steel Mill site in Granite City, Illinois. The plant is expected to be complete by mid-2009. The Franklin Furnace, Haverhill, Ohio coke plant, also owned by Sun Coke, is in its own growth mode with a $230 million expansion, adding 550,000 tons per year as well as a 67MW cogen plant.

US Coking Group LLC (Detroit, Michigan) has plans for a $500 million, 1.44MM ton per year non-recovery coke plant in Oregon, Ohio. XTnrgy LLC (New York, New York) is in the early planning stages for development of a grassroot, $200 million coke plant that would produce 450,000 tons a year of metallurgical coke that would also support a flue-gas fired 30-45MW power plant, to be located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For additional information on maintenance and capital spending at the operating coke plants in North America please contact Industrial Info Resources.

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