The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday awarded a contract to coal producer Consol Energy Inc. as part of the DOE's Power Plant Improvement Initiative.
"This award represents yet another step forward in advancing clean coal technologies for the future," said assistant secretary for fossil energy Jeffrey Jarrett. "With more than half of America's electricity coming from coal, this resource is vital to our nation's energy security."
Triggered by the brownouts and blackouts of 1999 and 2000, Congress directed the DOE to seek proposals through the cost-shared $95 million initiative to demonstrate technologies that would improve the efficiency, reliability, and environmental performance of the nation’s coal-fired power plants.
The Consol project was one of eight selected by DOE in the initiative.
Consol, along with partners AES Greenidge and Babcock Power Environmental Inc., will install a combination of technologies at the AES Greenidge Unit 4 near Dresden, N.Y. This will include a hybrid system to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and an advanced flue gas scrubber to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and acid gases.
The goal of this multi-pollutant approach is to demonstrate improvements in the control of mercury, acidic gases, fine particulates, and reductions in the cost of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide control, when compared to conventional technologies. The project also plans to demonstrate the performance of the multi-pollutant control systems during periods when the plant co-fires biomass with coal.
Consol Energy’s project plans to demonstrate the commercial readiness of an emissions control system that is well-suited to meeting regulations at these smaller plants.