NIPSCO cleans up: first utility to meet sulfur emission standards.

• Author: Keaton, Joanne
• Position: Bailly Generating Station

It keeps the air cleaner, cuts utility bills, avoids landfill pileups and supplies a needed by-product. The advanced flue-gas desulfurization facility at NIPSCO's Bailly Generating Station near Burns Harbor does all these good things.

Dedicated in August 1992, the facility received a Power magazine 1993 Powerplant Award. "High availability rate, environmental benefits and innovative 'own and operate' business arrangement with the utility" were among reasons cited for the honor.

Pure Air, a general partnership of Air Products and Chemicals Inc. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America Inc., designed and constructed the equipment. Using it allowed NIPSCO to become the first utility in the nation to meet new sulfur dioxide emission standards mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Cost-sharing with the U.S. Department of Energy, through its Innovative Clean Coal Technology Program, helped pave the way.

Burning high-sulfur Indiana coal at the Burns Harbor-area station creates |SO.sub.2~. Switching fuel would make a difference, but NIPSCO spokesperson Beth Wrobel says the company wants to support the local economy by using coal. Now the pollutant we'd rather not breathe is finding a new life in businesses and homes.

Pulverized limestone--a neutralizer--is injected directly into the |SO.sub.2~ absorber, and high-quality gypsum results. Gypsum is the material between the paper fronts and backs of wallboard.

In East Chicago, the U.S. Gypsum Co. turns captured gypsum into wallboard. The company had to spend extra start-up dollars when it committed to using the material but felt the investment would pay off. New equipment was needed because handling rock is different from working with the synthetic product. One plus is that U.S. Gypsum gets year-around shipments from NIPSCO by truck; when they received rock by barge, shipments came only in months the lakes were open.

(A drier form of synthetic gypsum called...