Combine more than 3,000 linear feet of conveyors from a power generating station’s fuel handling system in Tacoma, Wash., and a used coal-fired boiler and turbine generator from an operating facility in Bessemer City, N.C., and what do you get? The largest biomass cogeneration installation in Texas.
In a true illustration of the whole being greater—and greener—than the sum of its parts,
Corrugated Services, Inc. (CSI), Forney, Texas, contracted with longtime partner
Polk Mechanical Company, LLC, Grand Prairie, Texas, to develop a system that utilizes renewable energy, rather than natural gas, to power its largest paper mill. The endeavor took the project team to the East and West coasts, and then to Forney, to dismantle, modify, recondition and install thousands of pieces of industrial equipment. The end result: an onsite biomass electric generating facility built from recycled equipment and fueled with recycled hardwood waste.
Alternative Solutions
Spurred by spikes in the price of natural gas following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, CSI decided to diversify its energy sources and infrastructure. In 2006, it turned to Polk Mechanical, with which the company has worked for about 18 years, to install a nearly 100 percent thermally efficient natural gas-fired cogeneration system to reduce costs incurred by the company’s medium paper mill.
Next, CSI turned its attention to alternative sources of fuel. It discovered enough waste wood could be recovered in Dallas to power its larger linerboard mill, which requires 300 tons of fuel per day.
Polk Mechanical was back on board—this time dispatching groups of five employees to both Washington and North Carolina to supervise the disassembly and shipment of used equipment. CSI purchased multiple parts from the existing industrial facilities to retrofit its mill, including a 20-year-old boiler.
“Time was the biggest constraint,” says Polk Mechanical Project Manager Bo Legg, whose crews spent about two months each in Washington and North Carolina. “Any time you’re demolishing something and you’re trying to keep it so you can put it back together, it takes time.”
The meticulous care taken early on would prove to be crucial later in the two-year $26 million project. (Polk Mechanical self-performed $4.7 million of the work.)
Success Sans Plans
Altogether, more than 200 truckloads of equipment arrived in Forney, where the real challenges began.
“It wasn’t like we were rebuilding it the same way it was,” Legg says. “They had an idea of how they wanted it to go back together, but we had no completed plans.”
The pace of the job did not allow
RSH Engineering time to finish construction documents. With the April 2008 deadline creeping closer, the project team decided to proceed with equipment modifications based on pictures taken in North Carolina. Meaning, the 100 workers onsite would look at a picture, find the appropriate materials spread out over 40 acres, put them in place and deal with mistakes as they arose.
“Imagine having an erector set and all you had was the picture on the box,” Legg says. “That’s all we had. The drawings basically came in as-built. We’d never built a job like that before.”
A permitting delay compounded the situation, shrinking the actual construction schedule from 11 months to eight months. Committed to finishing on time and on budget, Polk Mechanical took the lead in maximizing workflow and streamlining communications between CSI and the other subcontractors onsite. Crews were split into “make ready” teams that staged materials, equipment and consumables, as well as resolved engineering issues, and “production” teams that put everything in place and tied up all loose ends.
Safety and SavingsThe job encompassed 118,000 manhours with no lost-time accidents. This achievement stemmed from the contractor’s “Is it Safe? Make it Safe!” policy, which empowered every employee to observe and correct unsafe behavior. Additionally, Polk Mechanical developed a “Primary Assessment of Tasks and Hazards”
checklist to analyze potential safety issues at the start of each day—covering everything from falls to maintaining the 40-acre lay-down site and protecting workers from the boiler’s potentially lethal “sweet” steam.
While this was one of the more unconventional retrofits Polk Mechanical has performed, it likely won’t be the last given the state of the economy.
“It’s becoming more prevalent nowadays because they’re shutting down plants, so they want to take that equipment and use it in a plant that’s not being shut down,” Legg says. However, he sets CSI apart as one of only a few owners that initiates this type of project with true sustainability in mind. “CSI’s philosophy is getting off the grid. They want to be self-sufficient and not rely on anyone for utilities.”
There’s a return on the bottom line, too. With the new 5-megawatt biomass electric generating facility up and running—only the second of its kind in Texas—CSI saves $25,000 per day in fuel costs.
Plant relocations, consolidations and sustainable retrofits are the name of the game in the industrial sector as manufacturing and utility owners strive to combat the depressed economy with leaner, more efficient operations.
In May 2008,
Southern Industrial Constructors, Raleigh, N.C., partnered with
D.H. Griffin Companies in a $12 million joint venture to dismantle an out-of-service electricity plant in Tobaccoville, N.C., for shipment to and reuse in Guatemala.
To prevent the coal-fired plant, which originally fueled an R.J. Reynolds cigarette manufacturing facility, from turning into a rusted-out eyesore—or worse, landfill waste—the team was charged with dismantling and tagging each piece of still-valuable equipment. D.H. Griffin removed four high-pressure steam boilers, while Southern Industrial removed the coal handling and ash recovery systems, as well as the water treatment facility and two 80-megawatt General Electric steam turbines.
“We were under a timeframe from the customer to get it taken down in nine months,” says Steve Dowler, senior project manager for Southern Industrial. “To get everything to them in a usable manner was a challenge. We had to match-mark all of the components, so documentation was a big deal.”
Adding to the challenge was the fact the plant was designed before the use of CAD, so none of the blueprints were digitized. But with the help of a crew of about 120 people and three 60-ton, 90-ton and 120-ton cranes, the project wrapped up on time.
The painstaking disassembly amounted to about 650 containers of equipment and well over 150,000 cubic feet of break bulk containers bound for Guatemala, where the owner oversaw reinstallation.
When completed last June, the project site was left in greenfield condition. To date, no redevelopment plans are in the works.