Aggregating Energy Since 2006
The Pioneer Press had an article on June 28 on the effort to save the Rock Tenn paper-recycling plant in St. Paul. The plant has operated for the past century and provides good paying jobs. The plant relies on steam piped across the river from the High Bridge coal plant for its process heat. Unfortunately for the plant and its employees, the planned conversion of the High Bridge plant to natural gas as part of the MERP (Metro Emissions Reductions Project) agreement with Xcel, the plant will lose it supply of steam.
City and county officials are looking to switch the plant to burning garbage (formally, RDF) as a long term option. Understandably, at least one environmental group (Eureka Recycling, based in Mpls, who is consulting on the project) and some neighborhood groups are concerned about this. However, in contrast to the Minneapolis incinerator, the garbage would be sorted beforehand to remove noncombustibles, which is supposed to make the process cleaner.
The trouble being that the most obvious biomass fuel would be wood, which is currently being sucked down by District Energy, who in turn have determined (I'm told) that running a steam pipe out to Rock-Tenn wouldn't make economic sense.
Others have commented that keeping the plant open doesn't make economic sense (anecdotal), but of course that's not the issue when THERE'S JOBS AT STAKE!
Yeah, Anne Hunt is quoted in the article saying that "St. Paul cannot become a community of just coffeehouses and condos". Does anyone know how clean the Mpls incinerator is? I recall there was initially a lot of opposition to it, but it seems to have subsided. It seems like burning garbage could be a good long term solution.
How clean can you make an RDF facility? I don't know much about the emissions from them, but my guess is that the PM emissions are pretty high... anyone know?
I would guess the PM emissions are higher too, but it seems most could be captured through some kind of filtering system.
One thing I remember from touring the HERC plant last year is that they have A LOT of mitigation equipment installed on the plant. Much more than is required. For instance, they have had mercury scrubbers for several years now in anticipation of future controls of mercury emissions.
HERC emissions are also aided by Hennepin county efforts to keep a lot of nasty stuff out of the garbage stream. They try to keep electronics out by providing collection in Minneapolis and drop-off at facilities in Bloomington and Brooklyn Park. This includes other common household toxic waste. They also organize neighborhood collection events.
There is also the impact of the recycling program. Because we have curbside pickup of plastics the dioxin emissions are kept in check.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between HERC and other MSW incinerators as well as electricity generators in general. The danger is that HERC will be used as a bate-and-switch for something in St. Paul. They will say that incinerators aren't bad...just look at HERC. Then put in something that is more in-line with most garbage incinerators.
As I recall from being on that tour with Darrell, HERC's emissions are somewhere in the single-digit-percentages of what they're permitted to emit, across the board. Except carbon, of course.
I actually have a neighbor who works at that plant and I talked to him about it a couple of months ago.
That steam line they use runs all the way across St. Paul - right by my house over the Marshall/Snelling intersection. It was built just for that purpose.
From what I understand, they are actually going to be burning oil for steam in the short term until they work out either this garbage solution or a biomass facility.