Pellet pollution

[EatenByLimestone]

Georgia has world's largest wood pellet factory, and state says its exceeding pollution limits

A southern Georgia facility considered the world’s largest producer of wood pellets used for fuel is releasing as much as three times the allowable amount of hazardous pollution into the air, environmental groups say.

www.savannahnow.com

 

[begreen]

Not good. @John Ackerly have you seen this? Thoughts?

 

[EbS-P]

Did it mention anything other than methanol? As a business model the day are limited for export pellets. Enviva is is financial trouble. It remains to be seen if they are in a death spiral but I’m guessing they will be sold off. They are one rule change in the EU (how to actually account for the total carbon budget of burning pellets) from total business model collapse.

 

[peakbagger]

Plywood mills all over the country had to deal with similar HAPs 25 year ago, many firms argued that it would close down the industry in the US. Many plants shut down, the price of plywood went up and plants were retrofitted, and new ones built with Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTOs) and enclosed equipment. HAPs are no longer an issue in the Plywood business except for newcomers. Same existing tech could be installed on a pellet mill, in many states its is lot cheaper to pay a lobbyist to get the laws changed or ignored.

BTW large bakeries put out Ethanol based HAPS, the smell of fresh bread, and they had to close down or install RTOs.

The EPA is responsible for creating the federal rules based on legislation from congress but many states including Georgia has delegated enforcement powers. That means the EPA delegates the enforcement and interpretation of the rules to the states and only steps in if there are major issues and lawsuits. Various states control their environment department by their budgets, if they want to be business friendly, they just underfund the environmental departments. With a business friendly supreme court, if the EPA tries to enforce the rules, they usually do not even go to the supreme court as the court will just use the case to strike down existing laws.

I was involved with a project in another state where the owner had a large wood power boiler running in violation of their existing permits. It was not that they could not meet them, it was they were too cheap to fix basic equipment and their operators were poorly trained. We tested the boiler and proved that with the correct operations and maintenance, they could meet their limits. A business-friendly governor and the former industry lobbyist head of the state environmental department he appointed, just did an after the fact increase in the allowable emmission limits for the plant.

With respect to the southeast pellet industry it was a flawed premise to begin with and all the SE states were racing to the bottom to get these plants built as its tax revenue and jobs in rural areas and large landowners like the revenue.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I thought there was another one listed, but when I scanned it again I didn’t see anything but methanol listed.

 

[begreen]

Acrolein was also mentioned.