New ideas for the environment; what some Indiana companies are doing to help.

• Author: Pockrass, Steven
• Position: Environment

Discarded tires hardly seem like an environmental treasure. But as surely as necessity is the mother of invention, used tires are becoming black gold for forward-thinking entrepreneurs.

NIPSCO Development Co. Inc., a subsidiary of Hammond-based NIPSCO Industries, is building an electric-generating station in England that will burn whole tires more cleanly than coal. And a professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette is studying ways that rubber tire scraps--as well as other trash items, such as brick and steel from demolished buildings--can be mixed with asphalt to build roads.

In addition to finding new uses for tires and other items that used to be bound for landfills, companies in Indiana are identifying new ways to reduce waste emissions into the air, soil and water. They also are developing new methods to break down waste and neutralize contaminated media in a manner that is cost-effective yet environmentally protective.

Here are some profiles of what's happening in the Hoosier state:

NIPSCO Is Burning Rubber--NIPSCO Development Co.'s $85 million tire-fueled generating station in Wolverhampton, England, is expected to begin operations by August 1993. The 30-megawatt plant will employ about 60 people and will use between 8 million and 10 million tires per year to produce electricity for approximately 25,000 homes.

Representatives from NIPSCO and ELM Energy and Recycling Ltd. broke ground for the plant April 2. The first project of its kind in England, the station is unique because it will not release harmful emissions into the air. "Actually, you can burn tires more cleanly if you have the right oxygen mix than you can coal," says Thomas J. Kallay, media information manager for NIPSCO Industries.

The ELM station's incinerators were developed by Basic Environmental Engineering of Glen Ellyn, Ill. Kallay says company officials are so confident in the incinerators that they have installed an air monitor in the office of the mayor of Wolverhampton.

All of the generating station's byproducts will be recycled for other industrial purposes, Kallay notes. The ash, for example, will be used in road construction. This is the first time that NIPSCO is developing a plant to burn whole tires. The company has mixed tire chips with coal in its Michigan City generating station, and the testing "went very well," Kallay says.

NIPSCO would love to build a tire-burning station in Indiana, Kallay adds, but it's not an easy sell because of public perceptions about the pollution produced by burning tires. "We hope," says Kallay, "this plant will in effect be a data base."

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