Construction Continues on Mirant’s $35 Million NOx Project at Maryland Plant

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Construction started this spring on an estimated $35 million NOx control project at Mirant’s Chalk Point Power Station in Maryland. The project is expected to be completed in the spring of 2006.

Using coal, oil and natural gas to generate electricity, the 2,602-megawatt power plant is situated in Aquasco, Prince Georges County, Maryland, serving power to the Washington D.C. and Maryland suburb areas. The facility consists of seven oil-fired combustion turbines, two General Electric cross-compound and two tandem-compound turbine/generator sets, with two Babcock & Wilcox supercritical opposed-fired and two Combustion Engineering tangential-fired dry bottom boilers. All units came online between 1964 and 1991.

Combustion processes at power plants produce pollutants, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and particulate matter. This pollution is reduced by modifying the combustion system, but that procedure doesn’t always meet air emission regulations.

Both Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) and Non-selective Catalytic Reduction (SNCR) are used extensively in the power industry for the reduction of NOx. A newer technology for reducing NOx emissions is Selective Autocatalytic Reduction (SACR). The gas-phase process is suitable for installation in new boilers or as a retrofit to existing equipment. Injecting a reagent, urea or ammonia reduces NOx emissions.

SACR technology is being installed on this project by the prime contractor, Mitsui Babcock, the UK-based energy service company, with U.S headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chalk Point's unit #2 retrofit is scheduled for completion during the spring of 2006. Chalk Point units #3 and #4 don’t require it, and a decision on a retrofit for unit #1 has not been decided on at this time.

The Selective Autocatalytic Reduction technology has been used at Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant (Harriman, Tennessee) on one of its units a couple of years ago. Unit #2 is also scheduled for the conventional SCR tie-ins in the spring of 2006.

Mirant Chalk Point LLC is a subsidiary of Mirant Corporation (NYSE: MIR) (Atlanta, Georgia).

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