New technology to heat, cool SCI-Fayette and benefit community
EAST MILLSBORO – The company providing steam heat and air-conditioning to the new state prison is using a technology that benefits both the prison and the surrounding community, according to local and company officials. According to Darrell Perkins, operations supervisor for provider Fayette Thermal, steam heat is produced for SCI-Fayette by burning waste coal to heat up water that travels through long pipes, providing heat by a very cost-effective means.
Perkins said the steam-heating system saves the prison 50 to 60 percent of cost, compared to standard gas heat.
Susan McNaughton, spokesperson for the Department of Corrections, said that the heating system does indeed save money because “it’s less expensive to burn waste coal than regular coal.”
She said it was especially beneficial because the DOC did not have to fund any up-front costs for the system.
McNaughton said the system also is beneficial to the environment because it uses waste coal.
“The fact that the system runs on waste coal is important. That helps with reclamation of abandoned mines and surface coal. It helps to clean the environment in the end,” McNaughton said.
Perkins agrees.
“We are actually cleaning the area. This is a great system. It is very safe and clean. We meet very stringent DEP (state Department of Environmental Protection) requirements and we are actually doing them a favor,” he said.
According to Perkins, the waste coal they purchase to heat the water that provides the steam heating, comes from “gob” or coal refuse piles, which the DEP would have to pay contractors to clean up.
“It works out beautifully because we are actually paying companies to clean up. We’re buying the waste coal, which otherwise has to be cleaned up, and using it,” he said.
In the future Perkins said there are plans to drain the two large slurry ponds located near the plant to remove the coal fines there to be used by the plant.
Luzerne Township Supervisor Ron DeSalvo, said that is yet another benefit to the community. According to DeSalvo, about 10 years ago, there were some concerns that those two ponds would “wipe out” LaBelle, if they overflowed.
James Lent, a retired worker from J&L Steel Corp., the company that is responsible for the two slurry ponds, remembers when the company first began pumping the slurry, which is a mixture of water, rock and coal waste particles into the ponds, in the mid 1970s.
He said sometime in the 1980s a second pond was developed to drain excess from the first pond.
Lent estimated that that ponds are approximately 70 to 80 feet deep with the larger one being the size of three football fields.
“They’ll get a lot of coal out of there,” he said.
According to DeSalvo there is three million tons of coal fines in the two ponds.
DeSalvo also said once those ponds are drained and filled back in the land could be used for development.
McNaughton said SCI-Fayette is not the first state prison to utilize a steam heating system. She said three other state prisons, two in Schuylkill County and SCI Greensburg in Westmoreland County, also have steam heating systems.
In addition to benefiting the environment, Perkins said Fayette Thermal is also beneficial to local businesses. He explained that Fayette Thermal contracts with Carbon Fuel Resources in Uniontown to transport the coal.
“We want to spend our money locally. We buy our nuts and bolts from Republic, and we hired locally,” Perkins said, adding that the company has trained and hired five people from the local area, including West Brownsville and California.
“These are fairly good jobs, technical jobs.”
Fayette Thermal was constructed adjacent to the prison in 2002 and is now nearing its final testing phase, but is currently fully operational.
It’s not the first of its kind, but Perkins said the steam heating plant, is the smallest of its kind.
“This is the first time a plant has been built on this scale or to this capacity,” he said, adding that a similar plant may be built in Pittsburgh.
He said steam heating plants are usually five to six stories tall compared to Fayette Thermal’s, 30-foot high plant.
It took one year to construct the 6,000 square-foot plant, which is manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Perkins said the plant is fully operated by computer. He said there are two boilers that burn one ton of coal per hour, per boiler all year round. Coal is stored in a 250-ton coal bunker on site and there are also 4,000 tons of coal in emergency storage.
According to Perkins, the coal is pulled up into the bin and fed into the boilers where it is burned to heat the water. Any parts not burned are transported back into the boiler. Fans push and suck the air, transporting the steam through 12-inch pipes that stretch 3,400-feet from the plant to the prison.
There is also a cooling system that cools the water to provide air-conditioning in the summer months.
Perkins said there is a back-up gas tank, which can be used to heat the prison in case of mechanical failure.
He said Fayette Thermal, which is owned by David Goldsmith, president of Power Consultants out of Carlisle, has the option to supply steam to other possible users in the future. He said there has been some talk of a greenhouse being located in the area.
He also said there is additional land near the plant for business development.