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Upgrades At Reid Gardner Improve Plant Emissions

Upgrades At Reid Gardner Improve Plant Emissions
By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
Published Sept. 16, 2009

Representatives of NV Energy gave reports, last week to local town boards regarding recent improvements made to the Reid Gardner power plant in Moapa. Major upgrades costing approximately $84 million have been made to the plant during 2008 and early 2009. The upgrades have brought significant environmental improvements to the facility, explained Reid Gardner Plant Manager, Dave Sharp, in meetings held on Wednesday, September 9 (Moapa Valley) and Thursday, September 10 (Moapa). According to Sharp, the upgrades have reduced the plants oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions by 282 tons per year and also capture 99.9% of particulate emissions.

Reid Gardner Power Plant in Moapa has recently undergone updates to improve its environmental footprint. This photo shows the updated plant in operation.
The coal burning Reid Gardner Power Plant has been a fixture in Moapa for over forty years. It’s first unit began operation in 1965. Other units were added in 1968, 1976 and 1983. Today the plant employs 140 people and its generating capacity is 557 megawatts; enough to supply a population of 300,000 people.

“The plant has been there a long time,” Sharp told the boards. “It was built with technologies that were available at the time.” But Sharp explained that NV Energy was recently faced with newer environmental regulations that required an update of the plant. In 2007, NV Energy entered into a Consent Agreement with regulatory agencies to make the needed improvements to the plant. “The company has faced these issues head on and hasn’t tried to avoid the problem,” Sharp said.

The first environmental update was to retrofit its units with clean natural gas igniters rather than the diesel oil that was previously used. The conversion to natural gas was completed in March of 2008. “The diesel used to put out a brown emission cloud from the stacks when it burned,” explained Sharp. “Natural gas is much cleaner burning.”

The second update was to install a new air flow system to the boiler of Unit 4, the most recently built unit. The system, called Rotating Over-Fire Air System (ROFA) redirects air flow within the boiler to improve the efficiency of combustion. This significantly reduces the plant’s NOx emissions, Sharp said. Sharp explained that the upgrade would cut NOx emissions by 30-35% from an already reduced emission system. That system went into use in July 2008.

The third plant upgrade was the construction of three huge buildings to filter the exhaust from each of the three older units. The buildings are called baghouses. Air full of ash particulates comes from the boiler and passes through a huge chamber filled with long narrow filtration bags. “It is like a huge vacuum cleaner filter,” said Sharp.

The baghouses claim to remove 99.9% of the particulate matter from the air before it is ever released into the environment. The structures were completed and put into operation in April of this year; one year ahead of schedule, Sharp said.

In conclusion, Sharp showed a photo of a Reid Gardner Power Plant that appeared to be out of operation; nothing discernible was coming from the huge smokestacks in the photo. “You can see that the stacks look clear here, but actually the plant is in near full operation,” Sharp said.

Sharp stated that he had been in the industry for 35 years and had worked in five different plants during that time. “This is by far the cleanest burning plant I’ve ever been in,” he said. “It is a state of the art facility.”

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