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rofit of two coal-fired boilers in Poland. The
boilers are located at district cogeneration
plants in Lodz and Poznan, where they will
raise Dalkia’s renewable energy production
to 18 percent. In addition to feeding green
power to the national electric grid, the
plants will also supply district heating to
700,000 inhabitants.
DEC Sells $20 Million
in Bonds
The District Energy Corp. of Lincoln,
Neb., has sold $20,365,000 in revenue
bonds to fund heating, cooling and backup generation facilities for a new jail and
other existing projects. The true interest
cost of the bonds is 3. 48 percent. Earlier
this spring, Moody’s Investors Services
and Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services
assigned ‘Aa1’ and ‘AA’ ratings to the
bonds, respectively.
About $14 million will be used to
finance the DEC’s S.W. 40th St. Thermal
Energy Facilities that will provide thermal
energy and emergency backup power services for the new Lancaster County Adult
Detention Facility. In addition, DEC received
an American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act matching grant of $5 million that will
be used toward the construction and installation of a large-scale geothermal energy
system for the Thermal Energy Facilities
project. Other proceeds will be used to
refinance existing debt on DEC projects,
which include the State Office Building,
state capitol, governor’s residence and the
County-City Building complex.
White Paper: Pros, Cons
of 12-Hour Shifts
Circadian is offering a complimentary
white paper titled Advantages and
Disadvantages of Twelve-Hour Shifts: A
Balanced Perspective, which examines the
pros and cons of 12-hour shifts from both
management and shiftworker points of
view. The paper addresses such questions
as how 12-hour shifts compare to 8-hour
shifts, whether they are safe and what
impact they may have on employee
alertness, health and productivity. This
free document may be downloaded at
http://tinyurl.com/2g7p29n.
Sierra Introduces Smart-Trak®
50 Flow Controller
Sierra Instruments announces the
release of its new Smart-Trak® 50 series
flow controller, which shares the same
advanced core sensor technology as the
Sierra Smart-Trak 100 but is available at
nearly half the price. The performance/price
advantage was made possible by reducing
the number of mass flow controller parts
by almost 50 percent, automating calibration around slightly reduced accuracy and
leveraging research and development costs
against already-developed and proven sensor, valve and LFE technology.
Smart-Trak® 50 Flow Controller
The Smart-Trak 50 delivers accuracy
of +/- 0.25 percent FS, 300-millisecond
response time and 0-50 slpm (nlpm) range
in one compact footprint. It comes with
316L SS wetted materials, field zero and
span adjust, analog outputs as well as
RS-232 and RS-485 with optional large
local display and two DB9 connectors
located on either side of the enclosure for
convenient wiring. For more information,
go to www.sierrainstruments.com.
Cogen Brings Efficiencies to
Wastewater Treatment Plant
A new cogeneration system at the
Budd Inlet Treatment Plant in Olympia,
Wash., has substantially reduced the
amount of energy needed for wastewater
treatment processes and plant buildings
by using treatment byproducts as fuel.
Installed late last fall by the LOTT (Lacey,
Olympia, Tumwater and Thurston County)
Alliance, the system converts methane gas
to heat and energy for use in LOTT’s new
Regional Services Center and the Hands
On Children’s Museum under construction
next to the plant.
Leaders at the LOTT Alliance have
received the Trane Energy Efficiency
Leader Award for their sustainable energy
and operational efficiency improvements
at the Budd Inlet plant.
The cogeneration system, expected
to save nearly $180,000 a year in utility
costs, provides all the heating required at
the site and eliminates the need to burn
off excess digester gas. Approximately
99.9 percent of the methane is combusted, dramatically reducing the site’s
greenhouse gas emissions. Combined
with an aeration blower retrofit currently
under way at the Budd Inlet plant, the
cogeneration system is expected to result
in an energy savings of more than 2. 8 million k Wh per year, enough to power more
than 210 Thurston County homes.
After considering several technologies, LOTT staff chose the cogeneration
system because it is expected to produce
the most usable energy per pound of
carbon dioxide released in comparison
to other alternatives. The $2.4 million
system was paid for in part by a $1.7 million energy conservation grant from Puget
Sound Energy.
