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Indiana plant to make coke, power
Friday, February 20, 1998 By Len Boselovic and Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
Coke isn't a four-letter word in East Chicago, Ind.
The industrial town wedged between Chicago and Gary, Ind., is the site of the first new coke plant to be built in the United States since 1982. The $195 million plant will bake 2 million tons of coal a year to produce 1.3 million tons of coke -- about 5 percent of total consumption.
All that coal going up in flames is bound to create noxious gases. Yet owners of the 95-acre facility expect they will easily comply with federal clean air laws.
The East Chicago coke plant is part of a $350 million joint venture launched in 1996 by Sun Co. of Philadelphia and NIPSCO Industries, an Indiana public utility, that will convert heat generated by the coke plant into electricity. The coke and power will be sold to the same customer: Inland Steel's Indiana Harbor Works.
The partners boast the plant will be built for significantly less than the cost of a conventional coke plant, will employ fewer workers, and will be far cleaner to operate.
"We look forward to good, high-quality coke at a reasonable cost," said Inland Chairman Robert J. Darnall. He called the plant "very energy efficient and very environmentally friendly."
The project is also benefiting mightily from federal tax credits for synthetic fuel production. Those tax credits, however, expire this July and would need to be extended if they are to benefit a similar project in Hazelwood promoted by the United Steelworkers.
Sun spokesman Bud Davis said the Indiana plant could begin producing coke as early as next month. When it reaches full production, it will employ 150: 110 at the coke plant, 20 at the cogeneration plant and 20 at a coal handling facility.
Davis said Sun was the only U.S. company that has developed a "nonrecovery" process for making coke. In nonrecovery plants, benzene and other pollutants generated in the long hours of baking coal are incinerated inside the coke ovens, creating hot gasses that can be converted into electricity. Sulfur gas from the coke plant will be removed at the NIPSCO power plant.
Conventional coke making used at Hazelwood and U.S. Steel's Clairton Works turns coal to coke in the absence of oxygen, giving off volatile gases that contain hazardous air pollutants. Those gases are collected and refined to produce chemicals that include naphthalene, benzene and xylene.
"Those operations have leakage of pollutants to outside air," said David McGuigan, regional chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air enforcement section. "Those leaks can be substantial, especially for older ovens, and can affect human health."
He estimated a new conventional coking facility would cost $600 million to $700 million to build. Moreover, he said, the byproducts produced at such a plant would be worth less than the electricity generated at a cogeneration plant.
Sun first used the nonrecovery technology in the early 1960s at a plant in Vansant, Va., but that operation does not include a cogeneration plant. McGuigan said the Vansant plant "doesn't stink and virtually all hazardous air pollutants have been eliminated."
Davis said there were two other nonrecovery coke plants in the world: one that was built in Australia in 1914 and that is still operating; and a pilot plant in Mexico.
Yesterday, Sun announced it had formed a limited partnership in the East Chicago plant with DTE Energy Co., the parent company of Detroit Edison. DTE paid $200 million for a majority interest in the partnership, spokesman Lewis K. Layton said. Ann Arbor, Mich.-based DTE purchased a coke plant from National Steel late last year.
Layton said LTV has not contacted DTE regarding a possible nonrecovery coke plant.
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