Change Planned for Power Plant
Jun 18 - Bismarck Tribune
A proposed project at the Leland Olds power plant at Stanton could radically transform the way electricity is made in North Dakota.
The application will go to the federal Department of Energy's Clean Coal
Power Initiative, a program that awards interest-free loans to innovative coal
projects.
Basin is asking DOE to finance $140 million of the total project cost. The
agency will announce its picks in December.
If the project goes forward, Basin would get nearly 200 more megawatts of
electricity out of its Stanton plant.
Its scope would make it the biggest energy project in Coal Country in two
decades, creating a construction mini-boom in Coal Country that would last for
several years.
It also would bring more electricity on line than in any single project since
Basin's big baseload plants were built 20 years ago, though the co-op has added
substantial increments of wind and natural gas-fired electricity since then.
Spokesman Daryl Hill said Basin would be a pioneer of the hybrid gasification
combined cycle process, which will involve almost a complete remodeling of Unit
II at Stanton.
Unit II is the newer of the two Leland Olds units, which went on line in the
'60s and '70s.
Hill said Basin has not determined whether it would go forward without the
DOE financing.
"It provides an option worth exploring," he said. "This is
just the first step in a long process."
The plan for Basin's Stanton station involves two major components.
In the first, the standard boiler where lignite coal is burned in Unit II
would be replaced with a circulating fluidized bed boiler. The new technology
boiler burns at a lower temperature than the standard boiler and has more
combustion zones.
The second component of the project is construction of a gasifier to make a
low-Btu gas from lignite coal.
That gas would be used to fuel a combustion turbine generator, the source of
the additional 200 megawatts of power.
In addition, exhaust heat and char from the gas combustion process would be
fed over to the circulating fluidized bed boiler for more heat and energy
efficiency.
"This combination is one-of-a-kind," said Hill.
Basin is in the coal gasification business over at Dakota Gasification Co.,
but Hill said the synthetic natural gas made there comes from a much different
process than what's envisioned at Leland Olds.
He said Basin would take advantage of demonstrated integrated gasifier
systems to investigate how to bring it to a commercial application.
Even though some of the technology planned at Leland Olds is still in the
demonstration phase, Hill said Basin is proposing full- scale construction, not
a pilot study of the process.
The proposed project wouldn't affect Unit I at Leland Olds, which makes about
216 megawatts of electricity, while Unit II makes about 440 megawatts.
The older unit is not scrubbed for sulfur dioxide emissions, a situation
which the federal government plans to end under pending air quality regulations.
(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com
.)