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SunCoke plant nearly 25 percent complete

$360M facility will be built with upgrades, company officials say at Community Advisory Panel meeting.

Delauna Pack, director of corporate safety at SunCoke Energy, talks about the Middletown plant during a SunCoke Community Advisory Panel meeting Monday, Aug. 16.

Contributed photo by E.L. Hubbard Delauna Pack, director of corporate safety at SunCoke Energy, talks about the Middletown plant during a SunCoke Community Advisory Panel meeting Monday, Aug. 16.

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By Jessica Heffner, Staff Writer Updated 1:27 AM Wednesday, August 18, 2010

MIDDLETOWN — The $360 million SunCoke plant is nearly a quarter complete as company officials discussed plans and project modifications at a meeting Monday, Aug. 16.

At the SunCoke Energy Middletown Community Advisory Panel meeting held at the Manchester Inn, members learned construction crews have started on the coke ovens at the new plant, which is located off Yankee Road near the Monroe border.

Also, Gov. Ted Strickland is expected to be in attendance for the plant’s ceremonial groundbreaking Aug. 25, said Delauna Pack, director of corporate safety and environmental at SunCoke Energy.

With 21.3 percent of the project now complete, Project Manager Boris Reyes said up to 600 workers will be on-site to lay more than 3.6 million bricks to construct the plant in the coming weeks.

“We have about 6 percent of the brick laid. We are going to get there,” Reyes said. “Everything we are doing right now is on time.”

During discussions about ambient air monitoring and how the plant will work once in operation, SunCoke officials outlined how certain changes to the design of the Middletown plant should compensate for problems at a similar facility in Franklin Furnace, Ohio.

Lisa Frye, CAP member and president of plant opposition group SunCoke Watch Inc., questioned how the company would be able to stay within its emissions limits here since the SunCoke facility in Franklin Furnace has been continually out of compliance.

Mike White, senior vice president of operations, said two major design differences are being implemented at the Middletown plant.

The first is the main stack design where the majority of emissions will be vented. While the other Ohio facility had part of its main stack collapse due to corrosion, White said Middletown’s stack will be made of a thicker carbon steel, as opposed to stainless steel.

He also said the heat recovery steam generator will be designed differently. The fins in the radiator-type tubing collects gas deposits, which require more cleaning and therefore more maintenance downtime and emission venting through the plant’s bypass stacks. White said the Middletown plant will use a different design, called bare tubes, which should reduce the problem.

The next CAP meeting is Sept. 13, when members will discuss the vegetation plan and noise and light pollution.