District Energy - 2007 Fourth Quarter

Industry
News

menting World Green Building Council standards. Earlier this year, Nalco became a member of the U.S. Green Building Council.

As a founding member, Nalco Brazil contributes technical information about air quality, water and energy efficiency to ensure that LEED^®-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) companies are following best practices based on Brazilian standards. Nalco Brazil uses programs like 3D TRASAR^®cooling water technology, the COIL-FLO^®coil-cleaning program, and the Building Environment Solutions indoor air-quality program to help building managers attain LEED certification points while enjoying energy savings and increased tenant satisfaction.

Toronto Airport Saves Energy

When the blackout of August 2003 hit Ontario, Toronto’s Pearson International Airport (PIA) – Canada’s largest airport – operated on backup generators, able to accept a limited number of inbound flights but forced to cancel hundreds of other flights. In the wake of that event, the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) opened a 117 MW cogeneration facility in December 2005. Capable of supplying power to the airport in the event of another blackout, the facility also can and does feed electricity to the grid, assisting the province on days when demand is at its peak.

The facility generates electricity through two gas turbines. Waste heat is recovered through two steam boilers to create additional electricity through a steam turbine. Steam that is not used to power the turbine is redirected to the airport’s Central Utility Plant, which supports PIA’s heating and cooling needs. The GTAA reports that in 2006 it saved approximately 4,000 MWh of electricity and 39,000 GJ of heating energy by using ‘free’ steam from the cogeneration facility.

The GTAA says it has made energy conservation a priority, saving significant energy in 2006. Compared to 2005, more than 45,000 MW were saved, equal to 2. 25 hours of consumption for the entire province of Ontario. These savings were

partially due to increased use of daylight within terminal buildings, reduced lighting at night, installation of programmable photocells and energy-saving controllers on escalators and moving walks.

Technology to Turn Low-Rank
Coal Into ‘Green Fuel’

Silverado Green Fuel Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silverado Gold Mines Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C., has designed a technology that it says can help make America energy self-sufficient. The company is planning to use this technology to turn low-rank coal (LRC) into ‘green fuel’ by pressure cooking it to dehydrate the particles and release waxes and resins, leaving the particles in a safe, high-energy state, suspended in their originally extracted water. The water is treated and then added back to the dried coal. The end product is a thick, oily liquid called green fuel.

According to the company, green fuel can be used to power oil-fired power plants directly or as feedstock for further processing (gasification and liquefaction) to produce transportation fuels (jet, diesel, gasoline), key agricultural compounds (fertilizers, synthetic petrochemical feedstocks, ammonia), industrial products (oils, lubricants, synthetics) and even consumer products (plastics, packaging), etc.

Silverado Green Fuel has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Mississippi Development Authority and other state agencies to build a $26 million green fuel demonstration ‘Ecoplex’ plant to produce the coal-based alternative fuel, utilizing Mississippi’s vast LRC reserves.

The company maintains that, using the hydrothermal treatment process, LRC can be converted into a stable, low-cost, liquid, nonhazardous LRC-water fuel, which can be burned in oil-designed boilers with little or no derating. It can now be produced as an oil equivalent for many industrial applications. Silverado Green Fuel says that this is only the first stage, however: Further gasification and liquefaction processes can produce a synthetic fuel able to be used for virtually all applications that oil is used for now.