Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408260043
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The one with the most immediate potential is the Limestone Emission Control system, which is about to go into industrial use for the first time early next month.
The system removes sulphur dioxide, "a precursor to acid rain," from smokestacks of power plants that use combustible fossil fuels, such as coal and oil.
It will be successful, said John Mycock, ETS executive vice president, because it removes the toxin at a low cost compared with other systems.
In the system, the gas flows through a large container with a moving bed of limestone similar to the product used on roadbeds in Virginia. Water is added, and the sulphur dioxide reacts with the calcium in the limestone.
The purified gas flows out the smokestack, leaving a byproduct of gypsum, which may or may not have commercial value. The cleaned limestone is then reintroduced in an ongoing operation.
The cost varies with the megawatts of the plant and the sulphur content of the coal.
But at 350 megawatts, as an example, ETS said its system costs $317 per ton of sulphur dioxide removed. Competing technologies cost $499 to $521 for that amount.
The competing commercial technologies are the Limestone Scrubber, Lime Spray Drying, Wellman Lord and Line Dual Alkali.
China and Vietnam alone, Mycock said, will build 100,000 megawatts of new generators by 2000. He calculates that those countries represent $3 million in potential sales for ETS' Limestone Emission Control system and its competitors.
South Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines and, especially, India are strong potential customers, Mycock said. These are countries that have to catch up in their power sources if they expect to develop new industries to compete with the West.
The system has the largest potential market worldwide of the company's four inventions.
Other countries, he said, will follow the United States' lead in enacting air-pollution regulations, making removal of sulphur dioxide a necessity.
A second product that ETS has in commercial production is a monitor to check the performance of a bag house, which is a system that uses fabric bags to filter gases.
ETS Chairman John McKenna said it is in use by such customers as Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. and a Westinghouse energy plant outside Philadelphia.
A dry reactor system, the third patent, controls acid gases and particulate emissions from municipal and hospital incinerators. A hospital in Fairfax uses the system, McKenna said, and several proposals are out to potential customers in Taiwan.
The fourth invention, a hardware system that controls particulate emissions, is "on hold" until the other three are more developed commercially, McKenna said.
by CNB