BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY FOR THE GLOBAL GENERATION INDUSTRY

Vol. 154 • No.7· July 2010

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Established 1882 • Vol. 154 • No.7 July 2010

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COVER STORY: MERCURY REMOVAL

26 Determining AGCS Mercury Removal Co-Benefits

Research by Southern Company shows that the existing air quality control systems (AQCSs) at its coal-fired power plants provide efficient mercury removal, even though removing that pollutant wasn't a primary goal when installing the systems. That co-benefit soon could become more valuable for all coal-fired power plants, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is likely to propose mercury emissions standards next spring. This co-benefit is variable, so careful monitoring and measuring are needed to quantify its effectiveness under all operating conditions. Nevertheless, the ability to piggyback mercury control on existing AQCSs could be enormously important.

SPECIAL REPORT: POWER IN CHINA

33 China: A World Powerhouse

Electricity powers industrial economies, so it's a given that China-factory for the world-is focused on increasing its generating capacity. But China isn't simply adding more of what's already available in terms of technology. In a move that is transforming the nation into a power industry R&D hub, China is fast-tracking the implementation of everything from ultrahigh-voltage lines to nuclear power to carbon capture and sequestration. China already dominates worldwide solar module manufacturing, so don't be surprised if in the not-so-distant future your new thermal and nuclear plant equipment is made in China.

FEATURES

AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT

42 ReACT Reduces Emissions and Water Use

Regenerative activated coke technology (ReACT) is an integrated multipollutant control approach that removes SOx, NOx, and Hg from coal-fired plants by adsorption with activated coke to attain emissions levels found at natural gas-fired plants. Its sweet spot is applications where minimizing water use is essential.

46 Circulating Fluid Bed Scrubbers Bridge the Gap Between Dry and Wet Scrubbers

The circulating fluidized bed process promises high S02 removal efficiencies, extremely low water consumption, and the ability to bridge the plant size gap between spray dryer absorbers and wet flue gas desulfurization. Though relatively new in the U.S., the technology has been broadly applied in Europe and China.

COFIRING BIOMASS

52 Drax Offers Model for Cofiring Biomass

The UK will soon be home to the largest dedicated cofiring power plant in the world. Its six-unit, 4,OOO-MW Drax Power Station has already proven the approach and will soon fuel 12.5% of its capacity with biomass when the system is completed this summer.

PLANT SAFETY

56 Use Dry Fog to Control Coal Dust Hazards

Although dry fogging has been around for three decades, it only recently was accepted as a best demonstrated technology by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Learn how and why it beats bag houses hands down.

July 2010 I POWER

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26

2

ELECTRIC POWER 2010: WHERE THE GENCOS MEET

59 Industry Pivots on Natural Gas, Hails Cap and Trade

Our roundup of selected ELECTRIC POWER Conference highlights begins by looking at themes that emerged from the state-of-the-industry keynote address and executive roundtable. (Also see the box below.)

62 PRB Coal Users' Group Celebrates a Decade of Achievement

Though coal plants are getting harder to build in the U.S., coal will continue to be a key fuel worldwide for some time. Low-sulfur coals, which marry extra risk with lower emissions, require special handling, and that's where the Powder River Basin (PRB) Coal Users' Group comes in to help.

65 Utility Perspectives on Using Renewable Power

Renewables have hit the U.S. mainstream, at least in terms of the time and attention they require from utility management. Here's what some of those managers had to say about financing, regulation, and technology matters.

67 A Slow Slog Ahead for U.S. Nukes

Our story title says it all. Uprates constitute the only real action at the moment, though small and modular designs promise future flexibility.

69 Regulations and Economics Drive Wet FGD Upgrades

Reducing operation and maintenance costs is just one of many reasons that coalfired plants are looking at retrofitting wet flue gas desulfurization systems.

DEPARTMENTS

6 SPEAKING OF POWER

Carbon Controls Fail Business Case Study

GLOBAL MONITOR

8 Is Eskom Ready for the World Cup?

8 Abengoa Solar Begins Operation of 50-MW Parabolic Trough Plant 9 140-MW Geothermal Plant Starts Up in New Zealand

10 Australia Gets Hydropower from Wastewater

10 Oatar Opens 2,000-MW Gas Plant

12 Integrating Wave and Wind Power

12 POWER Digest

14 Letter to the Editor: Natural Gas Piping

FOCUS ON O&M

16 New Coating System Extends Life of Cooling Tower

18 New Process Transforms Waste into Product for Controlling Emissions 20 Shoring System Uses First Built-In Ladder Supports

LEGAL & REGULATORY

24 Climate Change: Avoid Political Thickets By Steven F. Greenwald and Jeffrey P. Gray

70 NEW PRODUCTS 76 COMMENTARY

WTE: Next-Generation Sustainable Energy

By Dr. Marco J. Castaldi, Earth & Environmental Engineering Dept., Columbia University

More from POWER Online

Executives TaLk about Cap and Trade ... We recently posted links to video clips of the Power Industry Executive Roundtable, which took place at May's ELECTRIC POWER Conference. The excerpts posted to date focus on the participants' views of the proposed American Power Act. You may be surprised by what they had to say.

Follow POWER on Facebook and Twitter ... For the latest news and updates, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Visit www.powermag.com to link directly to our social media pages.

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BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY FOR THE GLOBAL GENERATION INDUSTRY

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Carbon Controls Fail Business Case Study

C ap-and-trade programs are featured in at least two u.s. legislative proposals to reduce carbon emissions, usually by around 80% by 2050 using a 2005 baseline. The benefits that accrue from the immense investment required to reach these goals are nebulous and don't occur until decades after the investment. Based on my back-of-the-envelope analysis, the cost-benefit ratio of these proposals does not pass a cursory costbenefit analysis.

I have searched the literature and found little published on cost-benefit analysis of the latest cap-and-trade proposals such as the ill-fated American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka Waxman-Markey). The recently unveiled American Power Act (APA) seems to have more utility executive support than Waxman-Markey but still proposes to reduce CO2 by 80% over the same period.

Useful Financial Tool

A cost-benefit ratio is a simple financial tool, among many, used by prudent government managers to evaluate the beneficial impacts of environmental policies against project cost for a slate of alternatives. Often the analysis includes aspects of a project that are difficult to quantify, such as quality of life and expected health effects. Similar analyses were made prior to S02' NO" and other earlier pollutant reduction rulemaking. The results always found that the benefits for society far outweigh the costs.

What is the cost-benefit ratio for the proposed APA cap-and-trade regime? It's time, as I have on several occasions in this column, to pull out my pen and envelope and run the numbers.

The Benefits

The APA proposes to reduce CO2 emissions by 17% by 2020, 43% by 2030, and 80% by 2050 from a 2005 baseline.

Recent Energy Information Administration data show that the portion of global CO2 emissions of all types attributed to the u.S. is 20.2%, decreasing (given the expected emissions increases from less-

6

developed countries) in the out years. The trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration for the past few decades is about a 2 ppm per year increase, so I extrapolated the uncontrolled global ambient CO2 concentration in 2050 as 90 ppm over the 2005 baseline. The portion attributed to the U.S. is conservatively estimated as 20% of 90 ppm-let's use 100 ppm globally or 20 ppm as the U.S. contribution. If CO2 is reduced 80% on schedule by 2050 per APA, then the u.S. contribution to the global increase will only be 20% of 20 ppm, or 4 ppm.

Accordi ng to the Intergovern mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), if carbon emissions continue unabated, then we should expect global average annual temperatures to increase by 2C (rounded up) by 2050 using the worst-case (Case AlB) projections. The estimated IPCC pre-industrial level of CO2 is 280 ppm, and unabated CO2 levels in 2050 are modeled as rising to 560 ppm, using the same Case AlB projections.

Let's now put pen to paper. I estimate the maximum U.S. contribution to global temperature rise by 2050 as 2C x (18-4) ppm/280C = O.lC over the next 45 years. The same calculation for the year 2020 is only a 0.02C temperature rise.

Climatologist Chip Knappenberger used the standard IPCC climate models to conclude that Waxman-Markey would decrease global average temperatures by about O.lC by 2100, so my estimates are in the ballpark. For comparison, the accuracy of a high-quality thermocouple is ±1.0c.

The Costs

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) cost analysis of Waxman-Markey estimated that by 2020 each U.S. household would pay $160 per year and that the cost would rise to $1,100 per year by 2030 for a carbon-reduced economy. Other analyses found the numbers to be significantly higher (the Heritage Foundation predicts numbers 10 times larger), but let's go with the EPA numbers. Under this plan-which includes many idealized and controversial caveats, assumptions,

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and footnotes too numerous to discussthe EPA concluded that the Waxman-Markey carbon cap-and-trade system will cost up to 0.8% of our economic consumption by 2050 if it is not enacted.

The Ratio

The IPCC AR4 report concluded that a 4C temperature increase will cost the global community up to 3% of global economic output. Let's use that ratio to scale our numbers to determine the benefits (actually, avoided economic and environmental damage) of carbon controls.

If we use a O.lC temperature rise by 2100, then the U.S. will be hit with 0.1 divided by 4 equals 0.08% decrease in economic output from a non-carbon-controlled economy. In other words, the costs of compliance (0.8% drop in economic consumption) is 10 times the benefits received (0.08% temperature reduction). My quick and dirty analysis certainly has many flaws, but the result remains clear:

A cost-benefit ratio of 10 is a very poor investment by any reasonable standard.

The day of the climate scientist as rock star has passed. A Gallup poll survey conducted March 4-7 found that 48% of Americans now believe that the "seriousness of global warming is exaggerated," up from 31% in 1997. I expect this survey percentage to continue its rise as the public learns more about climate science irregularities and the cost of the EPA's CO2 rules.

For professional politicians, these poll results probably carry more weight than a thorough business case analysis of the APA. However, the recent primary results show the public's interest in supporting successful businesspersons that will appreciate a good case study over professional politician.

Be it poll-driven politics or business acumen, I expect our current and future Washington representatives will soon understand that carbon cap and trade is just another poorly timed energy tax and a legislative non-starter .•

-Dr. Robert Peltier, PE, is POWER's editor-in-chief.

POWER I July 2010

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Is Eskom Ready for the World Cup?

The FIFA World Cup, the biggest sports event on the planet, is under way in South Africa through July 11. More than 300,000 fans are expected to attend the global soccer tournament, and hundreds of millions more will be watching on television. But a focus will also be on South Africa itself, which 20 years ago ended apartheid and has spent the following decades in a recovery process. And the pressure is on for Eskom, South Africa's state-owned utility, which generates nearly 95% of the nation's power (and 45% of Africa's total).

The continent's most robust economy was in dire straits in early 2008, when gripped by a power crisis that forced major metal mines to close and sent South Africa's gross domestic product into a downward spiral. Blaming the crisis on rising electricity demand and a lack of investment in new capacity that resulted from years of neglect, the utility has since recommissioned mothballed power plants and launched a massive power expansion program. (See "Whistling in the Dark: Inside South Africa's Power Crisis" in our Nov. 2008 issue.) The first new power plants are not expected to come online until 2012 (Figure 1), however.

Despite internal audits and simulations to test its readiness for the World Cup-including an independent review conducted by the Korean Electricity Power Corp. (Korea and Japan co-hosted the 2002 World Cup)-Eskom remains wary about supply, admitting that the country's reserve margin is not as wide as it would like.

Just a month before the tournament began, the utility warned that, though it did not foresee any blackouts, "cold winter temperatures combined with high electricity demand" could place additional pressure on the system. Consumers should also be on the alert, it said, introducing a warning system on public television channels where a referee holds up colored cards that indicate the power situation. The utility even went so far as to suggest that South Africans could be asked to turn everything off but one TV and one light during the tournament if the system were under pressure.

According to Eskom, demand is expected to peak at 37.2 GW, with

1. When it rains, it will pour. The six units at Eskom's 4,800- MW Medupi coal-fired power plant, under construction in Lephalale, are expected to come online between 2012 and 2015. The project, with a name that means "rain that soaks parched lands, giving economic relief' will include South Africa's first supercritical plant. A similar 4,800-MW coal-fired plant, the Kusile, is also under construction in Lephalale, with the first unit expected to come online in 2014. That plant will be South Africa's first plant to install flue gas desulfurization. Courtesy: Eskom

8

an increase of only 275 MW anticipated from the World Cup, based on studies conducted in Germany during the last World Cup, in 2006.

The utility has gone to extraordinary measures to ensure supply: It said that game broadcasts will be powered by diesel generators to avoid any disruptions, while uninterrupted power supply units will back up the lighting at the stadiums. As well as pledging that "only critical maintenance" would take place over the period of the World Cup, Eskom has reportedly secured supply of around 42 GW for the event, including its own capacity, by reducing exports and increasing imports, mainly from Mozambique's Cahora Bassa dam. Demand reduction commitments from big industrial consumers have also been obtained. Worst case scenarios would prompt the utility to activate open-cycle gas turbines, which could supply an additional 2,000 MW.

In June, meanwhile, at a presentation pinpointing the utility's status on its path to recovery, Eskom Acting Chairman Mpho Makwana said the utility was determined to "shine again, not just survive." Makwana pointed out that despite being tight, the power system had performed reasonably well, with no load shedding since May 2008. To increase capacity, Eskom has added 450 MW (mainly from independent power producers) and added new transmission lines, and it is on schedule-though not on budget-to increase capacity by 12 GW by 2017.

Perhaps more telling of the utility's status is that the World Bank and other organizations had loaned it R68 billion (US$8.76 billion) for its new coal plants and renewable projects. And the utility actually pulled itself out of the red, from a record loss of R9.7 billion in 2009 to a net profit of R3.6 billion in fiscal year 2010. The gains were mainly from an increase in tariffs granted by the national energy regulatory authority, Makwana said.

Abengoa Solar Begins Operation of 50·MW Parabolic Trough Plant

Abengoa Solar in early May began commercial operation of Solnova 1, the company's first 50-MW parabolic trough plant. Covering 980,000 square feet with mirrors requiring an area totaling 280 acres (Figure 2), it is one of five planned concentrating solar

2. A sunny place. Spanish company Abengoa Solar began commercial operation of a 50-MW parabolic trough plant at the Solucar Platform in Andalucfa. The Solnova 1 project comprises 360 collectors. Each is 150 meters long and consists of 28 mirrors. Abengoa said that the troughs were assembled using a "lean manufacturing system;' which enabled one quality collector module to be produced every 30 minutes. Solnova 1 is one of five projects planned for construction at the Solucar Platform. Work is in progress on the Sol nova 3 plant solar field. Courtesy. Abengoa Solar

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POWER I July 2010