Industry
News
U.Va. Renovates
Heating Plant
The University of Virginia (U.Va.) is
moving closer to completing its central
heating plant renovation. The plant, built in
1950, provides heat to 164 buildings –
among them the Rotunda, student dormitories and the Medical Center. To be completed by the end of 2007, the project will renovate and/or replace boilers, upgrade the
pollution controls and increase fuel storage.
To date, of the plant’s five dual-fuel boilers, Nos. 3 and 4 have been replaced; No. 2
has been renovated; No. 1 has been demolished and a new one is being built, which is
likely to be ready in spring 2007; No. 5 will
be renovated once No. 1 is operational.
Three of the boilers burn coal and natural gas, while two use natural gas and low-sulfur fuel oil. The renovations shift the oil
burners from a viscous oil to a thinner fuel
similar to diesel. The new boilers have state-of-the-art pollution controls while new bag
houses and scrubbers have been added to
the two renovated boilers. These improvements will bring the heating plant into compliance with all known and foreseeable
state and federal environmental regulations.
Plans also call for the construction of a
fifth coal storage silo on the site. Currently
the plant can store approximately 3,600
tons of coal; a new silo will allow about
950 additional tons of coal storage. Once
the renovation is complete, U.Va. aims to
burn 95 percent coal.
According to Cheryl Gomez, U.Va.
director of energy and utilities, the renovated plant “is designed to handle the
next 20 years of growth with additional
capacity on standby.”
Yokogawa Launches New
Single-Loop Controllers
In January Yokogawa Electric Corp.
launched a new line of single-loop controllers, the YS1000 series, which offers
improved connectivity with supervisory
control systems and incorporate enhanced
features that help operators work more
efficiently. Single-loop controllers are widely used as backups in distributed control
systems and in the control of boilers and
other utilities. The YS1000 series can be
used with general-use communication
protocols such as Ethernet and Modbus,
adding flexibility to system construction.
The series also features a new color LCD
that can display a message informing the
plant operator that an alarm has been triggered; the improved visual display of such
information helps operators reduce errors.
