Document ID: EPA-HQ-OW-2008-0667-3544
Agency: epa
Document Type: Supporting & Related Material
Title: 
Posted Date: 2014-08-15T04:00Z

316B RULE

 TELEPHONE LOG

Name of Caller: 	John Sunda, SAIC

Date: 	February 26, 2010

Company Name: 	SPX Cooling Technologies, Inc.

Street Address:	7401 W 129 Street

City/State/ZIP:	Overland Park, KS 66213

Person Contacted:	Kent A. Martens, P. E.

Title:	Chief Technical Advisor - Evaporative Cooling	

Contact Info:	Tel:      913/664-7501

	Fax:     913/693-9522

	Cell:     913/302-7234

	kent.martens@spx.com	

Questions: Called to inquire about treated flu gas disposal through
natural draft cooling towers, their project to do this at the Cardinal
Power Plant, and about natural draft tower cost and prevalence

The AEP Cardinal power plant $47 million project includes demolishing
the fill ring and replacing nearly the entire unit 3 cooling tower
internal components. The plant would have had to do this anyway to
extend the life of the tower so it wasn’t necessary to accommodate the
flue gas disposal system. They do need to provide engineering solutions
to deal with the hole through which the flue gas passes. A detailed
engineering analysis is performed and the solution will be dependent on
tower design its condition and various loads – he mentioned that the
towers are subject to substantial wind loads. One solution is to install
a steel ring around the tower near when the breach is.  I confirmed that
the system was only for unit 3 (the press release is vague about this.  
The company that recently put in new stacks for unit 1&2 as part of
those units FGD retrofit at the plant was well into engineering design
for unit 3 as well when AEP decided to go with the SPX solution using
the natural draft towers instead.  AEP had already last year during a
shut down lined the inside and outside near the top of cooling tower
with a corrosion resistant coating in anticipation of the project and so
this component was not part of the $47 million. Distance to the existing
(or new) tower is an important consideration. He also noted that Germany
requires that treated flue gas be discharged through the natural draft
cooling tower.

I asked about a comparison of long term costs for natural draft towers
versus mechanical draft towers and he said natural draft towers need an
expected life of about 40 years and be a base load operation like a
large coal plant. I asked if he had a feel about expectations of the
future use of natural draft towers and he mentioned that few of the 17
coal plants being proposed were considering natural draft towers but
that a recent coal plant project now cancelled or on hold was not
considering natural draft towers until the option and savings such as
stack costs for flue gas was introduced .

We discussed the issues regarding aesthetics and the nuclear stigma for
natural draft towers and I noted the trend in US businesses for short
economic horizons, he agreed that the public acceptance issues are a
problem but that new large coal plants do use long time horizons of 40+
years when evaluating plant economics.