The Tennessee Valley Authority has completed the installation of scrubbers at its Gallatin Fossil Plant to cut certain smog emissions from the coal plant by up to 98 percent.
The last of four new coal scrubbers added to the Middle Tennessee power plant went into operation this week, culminating nearly three years and $730 million of construction work. TVA is installing similar dry scrubber devices at its Shawnee Fossil Plant in Kentucky.
With the scrubbers in place at Gallatin, TVA is now focusing on a $370 million installation of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) devices to cut nitrogen oxide emissions from the Middle Tennessee plant. The first two SCRs will be operational in the spring of 2017 and the final two in the fall of 2017.
TVA previously added three other scrubbers on Gallatin units last year and expects to complete process tuning and emission performance testing on all the new equipment prior to an April 16 compliance date set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“We appreciate the hard work of all the TVA employees and contractors who expended over 4 million work hours to meet the schedule milestones for the Gallatin Fossil dry scrubber project,” Ron Nash, director of TVA’s clean air program, said in a statement Monday. “With all four units now online, our focus is on process tuning and optimization to ensure the units are meeting all federal and state requirements for particulate, sulfur dioxide and mercury removal efficiently and effectively. “