Storm Water Recycling and Reuse
Location: Homer City, Pennsylvania
Project Scope
Venture Engineering & Construction was contracted to provide various scope and estimate services for a storm water recycling and reuse project at the EME Homer City Power Generation plant in Homer City, PA. The projected included the collection and reuse of storm water for the future installation of a flue gas desulfurization system.
Coal-fired power plants require large volumes of water for efficient operation, primarily for cooling purposes. Power plant freshwater consumption refers to the quantity of water withdrawn from a water body that is not returned to the source but is lost to evaporation, while water withdrawal refers to the total quantity of water removed from a water source.
In power plants equipped with recirculating cooling water systems and wet flue gas desulfurization (FGD) systems, 90 percent of the evaporative water loss occurs in the cooling towers and 10 percent in the wet FGD system. Although water use in wet FGD systems represents a smaller percentage of evaporative water loss compared to cooling tower loss, strategies to reduce the wet FGD consumption are important because of the large numger of wet FGD systems to be installed, at new and existing plants, in coming years due to recent regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency. As a result of these regulations, aimed at controlling precursors of ozone, fine participates, and mercury, an estimated 82 gigawatts (GW) of FGD capacity will be installed in the United States by the year 2020.
As such, as a proactive and environmentally conscience move, EME Homer City has elected to study various strategies towards reducing water consumption.
Venture’s scope of work included:
- Hydraulic modeling of storm water flows across the entire site
- Analysis of Alternatives and recommendations for collection
and transfer of storm water - Sizing of transfer pumps and holding impoundments(s)
- Sizing of sewer lines and lift stations
- Conceptual Engineering Report