The Environmental side of the Colver Power Project

       More than 130 acres will be reclaimed and restored

Large areas of Pennsylvania are covered by huge gray piles consisting of the residues from more than a century of coal washing during the mining and coal preparation process. Until recently, there was little hope to ever  reclaim the countryside from the many million of tons of  waste coal as their calorific value was too low to be suitable  for traditional combustion techniques. Only the development of advanced  Fluidized Bed Combustion provided the possibility to safely burn the coal rejects within the  most stringent environmental emission regulations *.  Rather than letting these piles of waste coal continue to discharge their sulfuric effluents into the nearby sources of ground water and air,  Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) units such as those employed by the Colver Plant are safely removing these piles at a rate of 70 tons per hour, while generating useful energy for the region. CFB is considered by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to be the best  available control technology for reducing emissions from the burning of coal. For example, the Colver plant has far less emissions than a  typical oil fired plant in New York City.

  

*   One of the reasons enabling the plant to reach such  relatively low SO 2 emission levels, is the simultaneous combustion of crushed limestone along with the coal rejects. In the combustion chamber bottom air pushes the blend of coal and limestone into a state of suspension, allowing the limestone to bind the  sulfur released from the burning coal. As a result, the ash from the facility is highly alkaline in nature (high pH) and is used to reclaim the waste coal site where the residue from mining had been leeching acid into the soil and nearby streams. The ash is also applied to beneficial use programs in reclamation of strip mines and as a soil enhancement additive for farming.

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