Coal pollution cleanup project winding down
The Leland Olds Station scrubber system, which works by putting wet lime in contact with flue gases to extract the sulfur, should be operational in October.
Basin Electric Power Cooperative
- February 3, 2010
Originally published in The Bismarck Tribune
Reported by Lauren Donovan
The general contractor on a $410 million pollution cleanup project in Coal Country has completed its contract, signaling the near end of a huge project to remove sulfur dioxide from coal-fired power plant emissions in Mercer County.
Alberici Constructors Inc., of Missouri, is essentially done with the contract, but for a few nuts and bolts.
The company constructed desulfurization scrubbers at the Leland Olds power plant near Stanton, a project that started with site preparation in 2007 and will be completely on line in 2011.
Basin spokesman Daryl Hill said the scrubber will be tied into the newest of the plant's two power units during a fall outage. The scrubber system, which works by putting wet lime in contact with flue gases to extract the sulfur, should be operational in October.
The scrubber will be tied into the older of the plants' two units next year on a similar outage schedule. More than 95 percent of the sulfur dioxide will be removed in the process.
The project also included construction of a new 500-foot emissions stack that will serve both units. The stack was not part of Alberici's contract.
Alberici's vice president Craig Fesler said North Dakota was a new geographic market for the company. It clocked in excess of 1 million labor hours on the Leland Olds Station project without a lost-time accident, he said.
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