10-1 Water

Should breakthrough occur during use of the Town’s granular activated carbon treatment system, and the well water supplied to the facility contains MTBE at levels currently present in the groundwater, what fraction of the MTBE present in the untreate

RESPONSE: 10-1

 

Any untreated water supply to the Clear River Energy Center (“CREC”) that contains MTBE will be mixed and diluted in CREC’s raw water storage tank. None of this untreated water would be volatilized and be released as an air emission through the combustion turbine as any MTBE would be thermally destroyed in the high temperature combustion processes of the combustion turbines. Any waste water that would come from the demineralized water treatment system that contained the diluted untreated raw water would be discharged with the wastewater from the CREC facility to the Burrillville Wastewater Treatment facility. 

 

The activated carbon treatment system being designed to treat PUD’s Well #3A will have two carbon vessels that work in series to prevent breakthrough of MTBE from occurring.  The majority of the water supplied to the CREC facility will be used for makeup to the evaporative coolers that will cool the inlet air to the combustion turbines during natural gas firing in the summer or will be used for direct injection into the combustion turbines to control NOx emissions when firing distillate oil. Any MTBE volatilized into the inlet air to the combustion turbines or injected into the combustion turbines when firing distillate oil will be carried into the combustion zone of the combustion turbine where it will mix with either natural gas or distillate oil, depending on which fuel is being used, with the MTBE being thermally oxidized in the high temperature combustion process. 

 

The temperature in the combustion zone of the combustion turbines will be greater than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (F). As a result, any MTBE carried into the combustion processes will be oxidized and destroyed by the high temperature present in the combustion process.  MTBE is a gasoline additive originally intended to reduce automobile emissions and as a result MTBE was formulated to be destroyed by the combustion processes within automobile engines. 

 

 

 

RESPONDENT:

 

Michael Feinblatt, ESS Group

 

DATE:

June 13, 2016