Global plans October start ( IGCC )
By JIM SABIN
419-993-2091
09/28/2005
jsabin@limanews.com
limaohio.com
LIMA — Global Energy has finalized plans for the foundation of its first building in Lima, and construction will likely begin in the second half of October.
The plans were submitted to Lima’s building department on Tuesday, and a contractor to carry them out will be selected by next week at the latest, said Dwight Lockwood, regulatory affairs manager for Global Energy in Cincinnati. Once selected, the contractor will need a couple of weeks to get materials and subcontractors lined up, he said.
“We’ve got a few weeks worth of work to do, and then we’ll start seeing them in the field,” he said. “It’ll take them a couple of weeks to detail their steel rebar and things like that, and order some things.”
The company has been planning Lima Energy, a $600 million, 540-megawatt power station driven by a state-of-the-art gasification process, for about eight years now, and first publicly announced the project in November 1999. A lengthy permitting process and the energy indus-try’s downturn in the wake of the Enron scandal delayed matters significantly, however.
To date, a construction trailer has been set up on South Main Street, and environmental en-gineers took soil samples about two years ago. That’s been the only activity at the site, but once the contractor gets started, people will see a big change, Lockwood said.
“They’ll start by ripping up some of the concrete slabs that are laying in the way and get rid of some of those bushes, and make a flat piece of ground,” he said.
The foundation, which will be supported by columns driven into the bedrock, will be 200 feet across and 500 feet long, and will support a building nearing 100 feet tall, soaring above the Metcalf Street bridge that overlooks the site, formerly occupied by the Lima Locomotive Works.
The final construction plans for the building itself haven’t been completed yet, Lockwood said. The building will store the fuel for the gasifiers, primarily coal, he said. The entire project will take about 30 months to build.
Lima Energy’s gasifiers will break coal and petroleum coke down into base elements by heating, but not burning, them. The sulfur will be extracted, and the remaining gases can be compressed into a gas that burns as hot as natural gas, but which would be far cheaper. The gas would then be burned to drive power turbines, with some of it sold for other applications, as well.
Lockwood said the company will also need to meet with representatives of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio’s Power Siting Board to review the construction plans. That will be a procedural meeting only, he said.
“We’re getting there,” he said. |
