Tennessee Biomass Incinerator Shut Down For Costs, Safety
- by Frank Munger, August 24, 2014, Knoxville News Sentinel
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"249","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 233px; height: 155px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Biomass Steam Plant, heralded as a money saver and friend to the environment, failed to live up to its hype operationally, and the U.S. Department of Energy is reportedly trying to renegotiate its deal with the company that performed this and other projects at ORNL under a $90 million Energy Savings Performance Contract.
Johnny Moore, DOE’s site manager at the laboratory, confirmed that operations at the Biomass Steam Plant were shut down last fall after system checks revealed that walls were thinning in some of the key vessels and transfer lines. An analysis determined the walls were eroding because of the presence of “weak organic acids” generated by wood-burning operations that fueled the system, and there were safety concerns, he said.