Constellation unveils new $875M scrubbers at Brandon Shores 

Posted: 7:15 pm Mon, March 1, 2010
By Danielle Ulman
Daily Record Business Writer

Environmental victories rarely come in the form of huge puffs of white vapor, but officials at the Brandon Shores Power Plant Monday said a recent upgrade to the Pasadena facility has made it one of the cleanest nationwide.

Plant owner Constellation Energy Group Inc. embarked on the three-year, $875 million “scrubber” project to remove harmful pollutants from the gases emitted from the coal-fired power plant after Maryland passed the Healthy Air Act in 2006, one of the strictest pollution-reduction laws for power plants in the country.

To comply with the law, Constellation built two flue gas desulfurization devices, called scrubbers, which cut down on its sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide emissions. Those reductions will create healthier air to breath and cleaner water for fish and plant life.

Mayo A. Shattuck III, Constellation’s chairman, president and CEO, called the project one of the most important in the company’s eight-year history.

“It’s an example of Constellation’s continued commitment to balance our business needs with the commitment to being good stewards of our environment,” he said at the unveiling of the project at Brandon Shores Monday.

And although the project will drastically reduce emissions, Brandon Shores will continue to emit carbon dioxide into the air. In fact, because of the increased amount of energy needed to operate the scrubber system, Brandon Shores will produce an additional 2.5 percent of C02 emissions, greenhouse gases that are widely believed to be the cause of global climate change.

Shattuck said he recognized the need to address those emissions and pointed to Constellation’s solar, wind and nuclear projects in the works.

“We’re not really done by any means, and never will be done with the advancement in our environmental future and towards cleaner energy,” he said.

Environmentalists, who generally clash with big energy companies like Constellation, applauded the company’s move toward less polluted air.

“It’s wonderful that we’re getting cleaner air now,” said Brad Heavner, director of Environment Maryland, a statewide advocacy group.

“This means there will be fewer heart attacks, fewer outbreaks of asthma and fish that’s less contaminated,” he said. “This was a huge step forward for health in Maryland.”

Completing the project took nearly 2,000 workers and 4 million man-hours. The project was completed on budget and on time. Constellation executives praised the work of the local building and labor trades for successfully getting the project done.

On a bus tour through the maze of smokestacks, ductwork and conveyer belts that make up Brandon Shores, Joseph Kappes, the construction oversight manager, said the team running the construction of the scrubbers made sure that the tradesmen never put their tools down by loading the site with hardware long before it was needed.

It took 50,000 cubic yards of concrete and 20,000 tons of steel to build the scrubbers.

Constellation brought the first scrubber to life in December and completed the second one in February, sending thick clouds of water vapor into the air from the newly constructed 380-foot tall smokestack that sits adjacent to the now out-of-work stacks once employed at Brandon Shores.

When coal is burned to create electricity, it emits gas through a smokestack. The scrubber runs the gas through a tower, where it is sprayed with a water and limestone mixture.

The sulfur dioxide in the gas reacts with the limestone to produce gypsum, a product that is used to make concrete or wallboard. What remains of the water vapor then flows from the stack.

The state’s Healthy Air Act calls for the reduction of nitrogen oxide emissions by 75 percent, sulfur dioxide emissions by 85 percent and mercury emissions by 90 percent by Maryland’s coal-burning power plants by 2015.

Similar actions have also been taken by Mirant, which owns the Chalk Point, Dickerson and Morgantown power plants in Maryland. The company has spent more than $1.6 billion to comply with the Healthy Air Act, while Constellation has spent $1.5 billion.