Friday - January 08, 2010
No Nukes, just drywall
APOLLO BEACH, Florida — More than 200 manatees are wintering in a balmy canal outside a power plant, the latest exotic Florida animals seeking refuge from the state’s frigid temperatures.
Giant eagle rays and spinner sharks joined them in the 70-degree Fahrenheit waters Thursday as onlookers watched them frolic.
“This is a spa for them,” said Wendy Anastasiou, an environmental specialist for the Tampa Electric Company.
With temperatures well below normal, some less resourceful animals needed help from humans to survive.
Animals that live in the water weren’t the only ones affected. Iguanas fell out of trees in South Florida because the cold-blooded reptiles become immobilized and lose their grip when the temperature falls into the 40s or below.
Things are less dire for the manatees, which are not in immediate danger. On Thursday, the gentle giants at the Big Bend Power Plant in Apollo Beach — some weighing 3,000 pounds — floated slowly to the water’s surface to sip air. Every so often, one would surface on its belly, making the crowd on a viewing platform ooh and ahhh.
Anastasiou said it’s typical for the giant, vegetarian mammals to seek warmer water in the winter when the temperature of Tampa Bay dips below 68 degrees. Even when it is chilly, the sea cows swim out to the Gulf of Mexico to graze on grass during the day. During cold spells, the animals congregate in massive numbers, which is impressive for the humans who flock to the viewing centers to gawk.
I looked up Big Bend power plant, and DAMN. It’s a plain old coal fired generating plant. I was really hoping that it would be a nuke plant. Which would explain the warmer water nearby. Cooling tower outflow and all that. And that would have been the all-time bitch slap against the greenies: precious endangered manatees saved by nuclear energy. What an awesome coupe that would have been. But alas, it is not to be.
However, it looks like the Big Bend plant is doing a pretty great job at reducing pollution, being as Clean Coal as they can:
Big Bend Power Station meets strict environmental regulations through the use of flue gas desulfurization systems or “scrubbers,” which remove sulfur dioxide produced when coal is burned.
The scrubber for Big Bend Unit Four began operation in 1984, and since 1995, has simultaneously scrubbed Unit Three as well. The scrubber for Big Bend Units One and Two began operation at the end of 1999. The scrubber system complies with standards set by the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, and removes 95 percent of sulfur dioxide from all four units.
...
By using a variety of proven technologies, Tampa Electric will continue to significantly reduce nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide emissions from Big Bend Power Station. Planned actions include:
* Combustion modifications to all four units and evaluation of the effects of each modification on nitrogen oxides emissions. By the end of 2010, nitrogen oxides emissions from Big Bend Power Station will be reduced by approximately 80 percent from 1998 emission levels through the installation of a Selective Catalytic Reduction system on each unit.
* Optimizing electrostatic precipitators to minimize emissions of particulate matter from the stacks was completed in 2004, resulting in a reduction of approximately *71 percent when compared to 1998 levels.
* Further reduction of sulfur dioxide emissions by investing more than $23 million in scrubber upgrades, resulting in a reduction of over 88 percent from 1998 levels.
But the neatest part is that the process of capturing the pollutants actually creates gypsum. So what once went up the chimney as smoke is now a salable by-product. Neat! Granted, gypsum isn’t worth very much, but anything is better than nothing. And it’s nice to see what level of pollution these evil coal plants actually generate. Doesn’t sound like they need shutting down, bankrupting, or another 50 years of anit-pollution research. It seems to me they’re doing a pretty darn good job already.
Recyclable byproducts
During the scrubbing process, coal combustion gases are sprayed with a mixture of water and limestone. Sulfur oxides react with the spray to form gypsum. Tampa Electric recycles virtually all of its gypsum.
Gypsum is used locally in wallboard (drywall) for construction, in cement and concrete for construction and in agriculture as a soil nutrient or fertilizer
Fly ash, a fine particulate material that results from the combustion of coal and is collected in the electrostatic precipitators in all four Big Bend Units, is used in the cement and concrete industries.
Slag, which is collected at the bottom of the furnace, is a hard, glass-like material with many reuses, including in cement. Its hard quality makes it valuable to use as a high-velocity blast material to clean ships, storage tanks and other large metal surfaces.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/08/2010 at 11:04 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.