Tennessee Biomass Incinerator Shut Down For Costs, Safety

- by Frank Munger, August 24, 2014, Knoxville News Sentinel

Oak Ridge Nation­al Laboratory’s Bio­mass Steam Plant, her­ald­ed as a mon­ey saver and friend to the envi­ron­ment, failed to live up to its hype oper­a­tional­ly, and the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy is report­ed­ly try­ing to rene­go­ti­ate its deal with the com­pa­ny that per­formed this and oth­er projects at ORNL under a $90 mil­lion Ener­gy Sav­ings Per­for­mance Contract.

John­ny Moore, DOE’s site man­ag­er at the lab­o­ra­to­ry, con­firmed that oper­a­tions at the Bio­mass Steam Plant were shut down last fall after sys­tem checks revealed that walls were thin­ning in some of the key ves­sels and trans­fer lines. An analy­sis deter­mined the walls were erod­ing because of the pres­ence of “weak organ­ic acids” gen­er­at­ed by wood-burn­ing oper­a­tions that fueled the sys­tem, and there were safe­ty con­cerns, he said.

Moore said John­son Con­trols, which han­dled financ­ing and con­struc­tion of the steam plant under a spe­cial con­tract in which it was to be paid from the cost sav­ings, quick­ly brought in a tem­po­rary boil­er to allow con­tin­ued steam pro­duc­tion for heat and oth­er uses at ORNL. But that boil­er and oth­er back­up sys­tems at the lab don’t use bio­mass as fuel and don’t meet the terms of the Ener­gy Sav­ings Per­for­mance Con­tract, he said.

The con­tract called for the Bio­mass Steam Plant to have a capac­i­ty of 60,000 pounds of steam an hour, using wood chips as fuel, he said.

The $60 mil­lion plant was sup­posed to save the lab mil­lions of dol­lars annu­al­ly and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce green­house emis­sions by replac­ing some of the old fos­sil-fueled boil­ers. The new steam plant was sup­posed to pay for itself with­in 15 years.

Accord­ing to Moore, DOE is in dis­cus­sions with John­son Con­trols about how to move for­ward with a “robust” long-term solu­tion. He would not com­ment on a report that the bio­mass sys­tem may be replaced per­ma­nent­ly by one fueled with nat­ur­al gas. Nor would he com­ment on the poten­tial costs.

The dis­cus­sions are “pro­cure­ment sen­si­tive,” the DOE offi­cial said, indi­cat­ing that the exist­ing con­tract may be mod­i­fied. “I don’t want to say any­thing that would affect a con­clu­sion,” he said.

“We’re at the point now, we’re just try­ing to come up with some­thing that’s cheap­est for the tax­pay­ers and will give us a robust, long-lived plant,” he said.

John­son Con­trols spokes­woman Mon­i­ca Zim­mer declined to com­ment and referred ques­tions to the Depart­ment of Energy.

DOE entered into the Ener­gy Sav­ings Per­for­mance Con­tract with John­son Con­trols in 2007. In addi­tion to the Bio­mass Steam Plant, which was designed by Nex­ter­ra, John­son Con­trols also was to con­duct a num­ber of oth­er “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” projects and over­all cut the lab’s fos­sil fuel con­sump­tion by 70 percent.

The new steam plant began oper­a­tions on March 27, 2012, and a grand-open­ing event was held a few months lat­er, with offi­cials tout­ing the ener­gy-sav­ings projects as a way to cut costs and con­tribute to a clean­er environment.

“Basi­cal­ly, they guar­an­teed us that if we imple­ment­ed the projects … that we’d save $8 mil­lion a year or more in ener­gy costs, and those sav­ings are being used to pay for the projects,” ORNL Deputy Direc­tor Jeff Smith said.

The bio­mass gasi­fi­ca­tion sys­tem oper­at­ed for about and a half before it was shut down.

Moore said John­son Con­trols cur­rent­ly is not being paid for sav­ings asso­ci­at­ed with the new steam plant because it’s not meet­ing the terms of the con­tract. The com­pa­ny, how­ev­er, is being paid for oth­er suc­cess­ful projects that are part of the per­for­mance con­tract, he said.

In a state­ment, DOE described the prob­lems with the sys­tem fed by wood chips:

“The plant con­sist­ed of gasi­fiers to pro­duce syn­the­sis gas as fuel for a boil­er, which pro­duces steam … The equip­ment was housed in a new build­ing with a mod­ern con­trol sys­tem and upgrad­ed util­i­ties. Dur­ing rou­tine sys­tem checks in late 2013, it was dis­cov­ered that gasi­fi­er ves­sels and oth­er trans­fer duct sys­tems were show­ing signs of wall thin­ning due to prob­lems with the mate­ri­als of construction.”

Moore, who once head­ed tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment in DOE’s Oak Ridge office, said DOE looked close­ly at the tech­nolo­gies to be used before approv­ing the bio­mass plan years ago. He said sim­i­lar sys­tems have been used with suc­cess, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Canada.

Deputy Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Dan Pone­man, who was in town a cou­ple of weeks ago, was asked about the prob­lems with the Bio­mass Steam Plant.

“We try to bat 1.000 and I feel pret­ty good in terms of the invest­ments we make,” he said. “All of our efforts begin (with the intent) to do the best job pos­si­ble as stew­ards for the tax­pay­er, but also try to strike out and do things that are inno­v­a­tive. When you do things that are inno­v­a­tive, it entails risk. We’re going to keep with it. Bio­mass is a huge priority.”

An August 2013 audit report by DOE’s Office of Inspec­tor Gen­er­al was crit­i­cal of the “plan­ning and oper­a­tional costs” asso­ci­at­ed with the ORNL steam plant. Even though the plant was sup­posed to save the lab $260 mil­lion over two decades, the report said the project was still cost­ing more than it should — per­haps incur­ring as much as $67 mil­lion in unnec­es­sary costs over its lifetime.”