CCPI Abstracts
Peabody Energy

Brief Description of Project:
The Airborne Process Commercial Scale Demonstration Program brings together a team of industry leaders. This team includes: Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company, Airborne Clean Energy LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Airborne Technologies which hold the patents for the Airborne Process including patents within the emissions control system, regeneration process and fertilizer granulation, Veolia Water North America - HPD Group, a global leader in evaporation and crystallization technology with nearly 75 years of experience, and Icon Construction & Datel Engineering, who provide high quality services and engineered systems.

The scrubber, regeneration and fertilizer production systems of Airborne Process Commercial Scale Demonstration Program will be installed on Mustang Energy Company, LLC's Mustang Generating Station. The Mustang Energy Project is a 300-MW net coal fueled power plant that will be located in McKinley County, NM. The Mustang Generating Station is a pulverized minemouth coal-fired power plant that burns El Segundo subbituminous coal containing up to 1.56% sulfur. This equipment will be designed with equal emphasis on achieving market competitive capital and operating costs and with high plant reliability. Peabody Energy is developing clean, low-cost mine-mouth generating plants that will be located on company lands.

The Airborne Process has been under development for over eight years by Airborne with over $40M spent on the process development. Most recently, Airborne has undertaken extensive development program for this emerging multi-pollutant, post combustion control system at a 5 MW demonstration facility at Kentucky Utilities' Ghent Station. This was accomplished in partnership with Louisville Gas &Electric Energy Corp., The Babcock and Wilcox Company, US Filter's HPD Systems and Icon Construction. The development to date includes analytical results from this demonstration facility as well as the R&D program at the CANMET Energy Technology Center [CETC] in Ottawa, Canada, work done at the Ormiston mine in Saskatchewan, work by NaTec, now owned by Airborne Technologies, and fertilizer granulation by Agronomic Growth Industries (AGI), also owned by Airborne.

Commercialization of the technology combines the use of dry sodium bicarbonate injection, coupled with enhanced wet sodium scrubbing to provide control of SO_x, NO_x, and Mercury (Hg). The resulting byproduct is an ammonium sulfate (AS) fertilizer wet cake which will be further processed by Airborne's patented granulation process. The Airborne Process Commercial Scale Demonstration Program follows upon the success of the novel regeneration system and the viability of this multi-pollutant control system process that produced a high-value useful product.

The overall objectives of this project are fourfold: 1) to successfully demonstrate an innovative multi-pollutant control process that provides 99.5% removal of sulfur dioxide (SO₂), 98% removal of SO₃ (sulfuric acid mist precursor), 98% removal of nitrogen oxides (NO_x), and 90% total system removal of mercury from plant emissions, while turning the byproducts into a high-quality high-value granular fertilizer with the goal of making the Mustang Generating Station, located in McKinley County, NM one of the cleanest coal-fired units in the Nation, 2) to improve the cost competitiveness of coal-fired capacity by achieving capital costs competitive with current technology while providing a significant revenue stream from high quality fertilizer production, 3) to demonstrate the commercial applicability of the Airborne Process for existing coal-fired fleet as well as new plants, and 4) to demonstrate the availability of the Airborne process of 96% or better during the first year of operation.

These goals will be accomplished by designing, constructing, installing and operating a complete full-scale system including a dry/wet sodium based multi-pollutant scrubber, reagent regeneration system, and fertilizer production plant.

• Peabody and Airborne, as co-sponsors of the proposed Program, will jointly manage the Program and be the responsible entities to be Department of Energy.
• Mustang Energy Company LLC will be developing the entire power generation facility including the emissions control aspects. This would include the EPC for the Emissions Control Island portion of the Airborne Process. Based on the financial mechanism for the power generation facility, the entire facility would be contracted to a single entity with the financial capability to handle this magnitude of a contract.
• Veolia will be responsible for the EPC of the Airborne Regeneration Process.
• Icon will be responsible for the EPC of the fertilizer portion of the Airborne Process.
• Airborne will be responsible for the licensing and transfer of the technology to the Mustang generating station, integration of the technology into the Project, and providing the necessary technical assistance to insure both successful design and installation of the technology.