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Cleaner Burning at Montour Plant

Cleaner Burning at Montour Plant - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 4:56PM EST

Reported by: Jeremy Deebel
Thursday, May 29, 2008 @ 04:56pm EST
Washingtonville, Montour County-

One of the area's coal-burning power plants just got a lot cleaner, thanks to a $600 million dollar environmental improvement project.

PPL's Montour Power Plant near Washingtonville provides electricity to roughly a million homes. It burns about four million tons of coal per year.

Today, officials unveiled some of the plant's newest clean air technology. The "scrubbers," as they're called, remove sulfur dioxide, mercury, and other particulates from plant emissions.

Plant manager Michael Munroe explained, “We add limestone, crush it, make it into a slurry, take the exhaust gas that would've gone up the stack through that slurry. Through a chemical process, synthetic gypsum is made and we remove up to 97% of the sulfur dioxide from that gas, over 120,000 tons a year."

The gypsum will then be transported by a conveyor process to the U. S. Gypsum Plant being built across the road from the power plant, where it will be used to make drywall.

Both the power plant and the environment also benefit from PPL's other separation processes, which take coal-burning waste products and turn them into usable commodities.

For instance, fly ash left over from the coal burning process is recycled next door. "That's shipped across the street, some other ingredients are added, and that's used as a stable fill process for roads, soccer fields, and a lot of things throughout the community," Munroe noted.

The Montour Power Plant also has a wastewater treatment system to remove other contaminants.

PPL officials say it only makes sense for them to be environmentally conscious. Munroe added, "We want to be a good neighbor to the community...It makes sense for us to invest in our facility. Montour has got a long history here. It's going to be here for awhile. So we have to take care of that asset and look to the future."

PPL is completing a similar "scrubber" project at their Brunner Island Power Plant in York County.
 


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