Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. | A Waste Management Company

Wheelabrator Frackville Energy Company developed, built, owns and operates the circulating fluidized bed (CFB) cogeneration facility located in Frackville, PA. The facility has a generating capacity of 48 MW and consumes up to 500,000 tons per year of anthracite coal mining waste (culm) that, over the years, has been dumped and abandoned in eastern Pennsylvania. Wheelabrator reclaims, screens, crushes, blends and transports the culm to the plant where it is converted into electricity and steam. The resultant ash that is produced is used to reclaim abandoned strip-mined land.

The CFB boiler is used to burn the low BTU, high ash culm to assure efficient combustion and the lowest possible emissions levels. Make-up water for the plant is withdrawn from an adjacent mine pool, while unique design features allow for plant operations with no wastewater discharge.

Each year, the cogeneration plant generates more than 300 million kilowatt-hours of electricity for sale to the local utility under a long-term contract and produces over 60 million pounds of steam for sale to Pennsylvania's State Correctional Institution at Frackville.

In addition to producing clean energy, since the Plant began operations in 1989, over 135 acres of abandoned mine lands have been fully reclaimed and re-vegetated as a result of its operations. The facility is also designated as a "Star" worksite by the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program as a model in the industry for establishing exemplary employee health and safety programs.

Project Description and Specifications
Operational: 1988
Electrical Generating Capacity: 48 MW
Steam Sales: 3,000 - 28,000 pounds per hour (average 7,000) 150 psig (saturated)
Fuel consumption: 500,000 tons per year of 4,800 BTU/lb anthracite culm
Boiler: Kvaerner circulating fluidized bed
Steam Conditions: 410,000 lb/hr at 1,300 psig/955oF
Air Pollution Control: Limestone bed injection; fabric filter baghouse
Turbine/Generator: Four extraction condensing, 56,500 KVA

Project Benefits:
* Elimination of over 500,000 tons per year of environmentally-damaging coal mining waste
* Reduction of acidic surface water runoff from abandoned coal waste piles
* Reclamation of unusable, dangerous abandoned mined lands
* Long-term, economic steam supply to Frackville Correctional Facility
* Full-time employment of 50 personnel with an annual payroll of approximately $1.5 million
* Purchase of local materials and service totaling more than $500,000 annually