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Making
Smart Use of Fossil By-Products
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chart for raw data.
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Many by-products
of TVA’s fossil-fuel power generation are finding new life as environmentally
beneficial goods.
At fossil-fuel
power plants that use limestone scrubbers to lower their emissions of
sulfur dioxide (SO2), gypsum is a by-product of
electricity generation. Two wallboard manufacturers are using gypsum
from TVA’s Cumberland Fossil Plant to make products that were officially
certified as friendly to the environment last year.
Standard Gypsum
in Cumberland City, Tennessee, and the Temple-Inland Forest Products
Corporation facility in West Memphis, Arkansas, produce the first American-made
wallboard whose content is certified to be 95 to 99 percent recycled
material. TVA is the sole provider of gypsum to both manufacturers,
and an independent company named Synthetic Materials maintains a facility
near the Cumberland plant to process the gypsum before it’s shipped
out to become wallboard.
The wallboard was
certified by Scientific Certification Systems of Oakland, California,
whose environmental division offers third-party certification of claims
related to environmental achievement in product manufacturing and natural-resource
extraction. Because the Cumberland plant’s limestone scrubbers
reduce SO2 emissions by more than 95 percent,
the wallboard has also received certification for its pollution-prevention
benefits. It’s sold through building-supply stores that provide
their customers with environmentally sound products.
Similarly, the
nutrient-rich wastewater produced by TVA’s selective catalytic
reduction (SCR) system at Paradise Fossil Plant may have useful properties
as a soil additive. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded TVA
a cooperative research contract to determine whether the ammoniated
water produced by SCR systems can be used to irrigate reforested areas
that help absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
The research began
in 2000 and will be conducted over a three-year period at TVA’s
Public Power Institute (PPI). “We’re very excited to work
with partners like DOE and the Electric Power Research Institute,”
says Niki Nicholas, PPI’s Manager of Environmental Impacts and
Reduction Technologies. “This partnership allows us to pool our
knowledge and skills in order to demonstrate innovative solutions for
environmental issues associated with power production.”
Two other fossil-fuel
by-products that have environmentally friendly recycling applications
are fly ash and boiler slag. They’re sold to manufacturers of concrete,
roofing shingles, industrial abrasives, and landscape mulch. In addition,
TVA plants donate thousands of tons of bottom ash and fly ash annually
to communities for use on bike trails and walking paths and for snow
and ice control on country roads.
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