Firms Cheer Emphasis on Cleaner Air
President Reagan’s commitment to a $5-billion five-year program to reduce industrial emissions could advance anti-pollution projects being undertaken by several Orange County companies.
“We’ll certainly see an influence,” said Steve Bortz, a consulting engineer with KVB Inc., an Irvine engineering and consulting company that also makes equipment that monitors and controls emissions from industrial boilers. Several companies here are involved in pollution control research and engineering, and they expect some money to come their way in the form of grants and contracts for pollution control systems.
Acid rain, in particular, is receiving increasing attention from environmentalists and government officials worried about its long-term effects.
Acid rain is precipitation tainted with nitrogen oxide and sulfuric acid, and is the result of sulfur dioxides being released from industrial furnaces. It is considered a serious threat to the lakes and forests in the northern United States and Canada.
Recent studies funded by the federal Environmental Protection Agency indicate that the problem could extend beyond the nation’s industrial belt in the northeastern states, and the EPA is now investigating the extent of the problem elsewhere in the nation, including lakes that contain melted snow from the Sierra Nevada.
According to 1980 EPA figures, the most recent available, at least 27 million tons of sulfur dioxide and 23 million tons of nitrogen oxide are vented into the atmosphere annually in the United States. Most of it returns to earth in acid rain, experts believe. In the more arid West, sulfuric acid often is absorbed by dust and falls to earth as sulfate, which some studies have shown could be harmful to the environment.
A number of Orange County companies are involved in designing ways to combat these problems. However, research for ways to control those emissions is a laborious process of trial and error--trying different chemicals to absorb the byproducts of combustion, changing furnace temperatures and tinkering with modifications to the boilers.
Since the basic coal-fired industrial boiler design is at least 20 years old, much of the research involves basic chemistry more than it does exotic technology.
Energy and Environmental Research Corp., based in Irvine, is developing techniques for injecting powdered limestone into the combustion chambers that convert sulfur dioxide, a gas, into calcium sulfate, a solid that can be trapped before it escapes into the atmosphere.
“If you don’t have sulfur dioxide going out in the atmosphere, then you eliminate acid rain,” said Rock Brienza, research engineer and manager of EER’s 25-acre research facility just north of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.
Working closely with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and boiler manufacturers, EER has undertaken numerous projects to tune up existing boilers to reduce the amount of harmful emissions. (Typically, electric utilities are the biggest users of coal, but in California, environmental laws severely limit its use.)
Other research is aimed at producing devices to control emissions following combustion, but these, known as “scrubbers,” are expensive, and the great quantity of residual limestone, water and sulfur dioxide sludge is difficult to dispose of. The scrubbers, which “are almost like a small chemical plant,” according to Brienza, must be added to the boilers and are therefore a much more costly way to control pollution than using absorbent chemicals.
Whatever pollution control process is used, some coal-fired plants probably will be shut down because of their age and the expense of refitting them, said John Coyle, president of the engineering and construction division of Ultrasystems Inc., an Irvine-based company that specializes in power-related projects and defense and space systems activities.
Ultrasystems hopes that some of those who decide to switch rather than fight will be interested in waste wood-fired plants, co-generation systems and traditional oil- and gas-fired plants.
“We see a definitely increasing demand for the kind of projects we put together,” said John Dean, executive vice president at Ultrasystems.
EER and other companies also are experimenting with a process that removes nitrogen from the air before it is injected into the combustion chamber, thus controlling the formation of nitrogen oxide.
“The idea is not to let the nitrogen react with the oxygen,” explained Roy Payne, president of EER. By preventing the nitrogen from reacting with the oxygen, the formation of nitrogen oxide is prevented.
Some acid rain research involves “some completely new areas . . . some fundamentally new processes,” said Steve Bortz , a consulting engineer at of KVB Inc.
Reflecting the increased attention to a cleaner environment, EER now employs about 120 workers, double the total five years ago. Other companies also have reported gains.
Other projects under way by Orange County companies include research on ways to utilize coal slurries--powdered coal mixed with diesel fuel--in ways that are more efficient. They also are looking into reburning, in which a small amount of fuel is injected above the main combustion chamber, thus incinerating much of the nitrogen oxide.
Although the challenges and financial concerns in reducing potentially dangerous emissions are daunting, America can take some solace in its progress in this area. That’s because, industry officials say, unlike just about every other technological endeavor from automobiles to zippers, the United States is apparently ahead of Japan in the development of cleaner burning boilers.
