Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. | A Waste Management Company

Wheelabrator Shasta Energy Company is one of northern California's most modern, independent wood-fired power plants. The facility has a generating capacity of 58 MW and processes 750,000 tons of mill waste and forest residues from Shasta County and surrounding areas. Un-merchantable waste wood from Shasta-Trinity and Lassen National Forests, as well as from private lands, are selectively removed and processed in the plant to improve remaining standing timber.

The plant produces over 375 million kWh of electricity per year for sale to a local utility. The plant design includes three independent wood-burning units, comprised of state-of-the-art wood-fired traveling grate furnaces with utility-type high pressure boilers. The highly automated woodyard design includes capabilities to accept mill wastes, chips, and un-merchantable whole logs (culls) up to six feet in diameter that are chipped on site for fuel. The plant design also includes modern air quality control units, condensing turbines, and multi-cell wet cooling towers.

The facility incorporates some of the latest emissions control features, including staged overfire air in specially shaped furnaces, a selective non-catalytic reduction system for control of ozone-forming nitrogen oxides, and a zero water discharge system by use of staged cooling towers.

GENERAL
Location: Anderson, CA
Start-up: December 1987

PROJECT CHARACTERISTICS
Electrical Generating Capacity: 58,000 kilowatts
Fuel Consumption: Approximately 100 tons/hour mill waste/forest residues at 50 percent moisture
Furnaces/Boilers: Three, Zurn traveling grate, staged combustion furnaces; membrane waterwall boilers producing 170,000 lbs/hr steam
Turbine Generators: Three Elliott condensing turbine generators
Heat Rejection: Surface condensers with multi-cell evaporative cooling towers
Fuel Handling: Two truck scales, three platform truck dumpers, one hydraulic log loader; one 52-inch V drum and one 72-inch drum chipper and infeed/offloader conveyors

AIR QUALITY CONTROL
Type of Equipment: Three-field, high efficiency electrostatic precipitators

PROJECT ECONOMIC BENEFITS
* Full-time employment of approximately 52 operating personnel
* Operating payroll of approximately $3.0 million/year
* Related local employment of over 125 people for supply, transport, and handling of wood fuel
* Over $10 million per year in fuel purchases