Plant operators eye ozone levels

By Katherine Noren

Ozone season tips

Check to see if your lawn mower is out-of-date. Keep lawn mower blades sharp: Dull blades will make your lawn mower work twice as hard and use more fuel, which further pollutes the environment. Lawn mowers are frequent offenders of oil spills and high levels of carbon emissions. Keeping your lawn mower eco-friendly will ensure lower levels of ground level ozone.
Reduce the number of trips you make in your car. You can reduce your carbon footprint and ground level ozone by walking or biking when you would have normally reached for the car keys.
Finally, do your research! The first step to understanding the ground level ozone problems during ozone season is to understand it.

With Ozone Season starting up this year, staffers at the T.B. Simon Power Plant are working to reduce emissions and do their part to keep MSU a “green” community.

During the summer (May through October), ground level ozone is on the rise. A combination of the heat and chemical reactions make the summer time particularly susceptible for ground level ozone to accumulate. Gary Mell, Engineer IV/Supervisor, cautioned that ground level ozone is extremely dangerous, while atmospheric ozone is beneficial and protects earth from the harmful UV A and B rays of the sun.

During this period, certain regulations are put into place to ensure safe levels of Nitrogen Oxides (NOX) are being released into the air during combustion at the power plant. To do this, the plant has two key regulation techniques: Over Fire Air (OFA) and Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction (SNCR).

OFA lowers the flame temperature needed for a combustion reaction by adding extra air to the combustion site, which releases less harmful NOX into the air. SNCR injects urea into the combustion which reacts and separates the NOX molecules into Nitrogen and water, making the emissions safe and eco-friendly.

These two processes, which are activated during the summer ozone season, to regulate the NOX emissions from the power plant to reduce the ground level ozone, explained Second Engineer David Higgins, a board operator at the plant. The board operators, including Higgins, Third Engineers William O’Rourke, Donna Schlittenhardt and Kim Butcher, and Second Engineers Edward Woods, David Falconer and Michael Kane, monitor the levels of NOX being released from the combustion. Consequently, monitoring the emissions of combustion at the plant is more critical during this period.

Planner/Inspector/Analyst I Amanda Groll, the environmental specialist for the power plant, also monitors the levels of NOXs being emitted by the plant. Unlike the board operators, though, she reports the levels to the MDEQ. If there are unsafe levels in emissions or other problems, technicians or maintenance workers at the plant need to act quickly to fix the problem. With these regulations and specialized tasks put into action during the summer, the T.B. Simon Power Plant is doing its part to control its NOX emissions and protect the planet during ozone season.

May 21, 2009