The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has announced a series of public meetings on a draft air quality permit for the $1 billion Power County Advanced Energy Center, which would use coal gasification technology to produce fertilizer near American Falls. IDEQ expects to have the draft permit to construct for Southeast Idaho Energy’s plant posted on its web site by Sept. 19.
Upon posting the draft permit, a 30-day public comment period will start on the following weekday. Public meetings are scheduled for 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 22 at the Pocatello City Hall; 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 23 at the American Falls Library; and from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sept. 24 at the Fort Hall Tribal Business Center. A Spanish translator will be available at the meeting in American Falls.
IDEQ also plans to host a public hearing in American Falls, where a hearing officer and court reporter will accept oral comments. That meeting will be scheduled by Monday, Sept. 8, according to the DEQ. The plant will be constructed near ConAgra’s Lamb-Weston potato processing plant.
Cheryl Robinson, the DEQ’s lead engineer for the project, said her department will spend up to a month considering and researching public comments and should issue a final permit to construct by early December. She said the IDEQ will be required to issue Southeast Idaho Energy, a subsidiary of Refined Energy Holdings, a permit if it meets minimum regulatory requirements.
Robinson said conditions in the draft permit will be very specific, with language pertaining to each individual emission point source. It will also contain a fugitive dust control plan, which will govern how dust will be controlled from dirt roadways and during construction.
Though carbon dioxide emissions are not regulated, SIE officials have said they plan to eventually pipe their CO2 to Wyoming for use in oil or gas recovery. Robinson said the IDEQ will not issue any permits pertaining to water quality because the plant is not scheduled to discharge water.
John Burk, SIE’s communications director, said the project cleared a large hurdle on Aug. 5 when the Power County Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to grant it a special use permit.
SIE has made some slight alterations to its original proposal in recent months. Rather than producing energy, the company plans to buy up to 150 megawatts of electricity from Idaho Power. The plant also is now set to produce elemental sulfur as a byproduct rather than sulfuric acid.
Burk said SIE is close to starting engineering designs for the initial phases of construction. Having a partial design ready should also help SIE identify more specific cost estimates, he said. SIE hopes to start plant construction next summer, upon completing front-end engineering designs.
The plant would gasify between 2,000 and 2,300 tons of coal and petcoke blends per day. Two gasifiers would be installed, one for production and another to serve as a backup. The plant would produce ammonia, urea, urea ammonium nitrate, elemental sulfur, and slag for road mix.
The plant could be operational by 2012. The second phase, costing an additional $1 billion, would convert coal into diesel fuel and gasoline. Up to 1,350 construction workers would be needed to build the first phase of the project, which would employ about 150 people once completed.
SIE has purchased senior industrial water rights from FMC Corp., allowing it to pump about five million gallons of groundwater per day. FMC used the water for its Pocatello elemental phosphorus plant, which was shut down in December 2001.