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Harmful emissions from Lakvijaya coal power plant
View(s):A crucial environmental protection device in one of the Lakvijaya coal power plant’s three units is functioning at below required efficiency, resulting in harmful emissions from its smokestack.
The electrostatic precipitator (ESP) of unit 1 has been running at below optimum for nearly one month. There are conflicting reports about the level of efficiency, with internal sources maintaining it has dropped as low as 40 percent. But a spokesman for the Power and Energy Ministry downplayed the problem.
The ESP is also called an electrostatic air cleaner. It is a filtration device that removes fine particles–in this case, fly ash–from a flowing gas.
“The ESP has sixteen fields to filter ash,” said Sulakshana Jaywardena, the Ministry’s Director (Development). “Five are not working but the other eleven are functioning. If you visit the plant, you can see the flame and that the issue is not so bad.”
He confirmed, however, that the Ceylon Electricity Board’s (CEB) Deputy General Manager had requested permission from its General Manager to shut down the unit–the coal power plant’s oldest one, having been commissioned in 2011–to facilitate repairs. “If there is a considerable issue, we will shut down and do the repair,” he said.
But the Wayamba Provincial Council Environmental Authority (WPCEA) has clearly instructed the CEB to fix the problem now. “We have been giving them time,” said Saman Lenaduwa, the Authority’s head. “We will stop giving them excuses hereafter. They will have to shut down the plant, if necessary, and do the repairs.” A meeting in this regard was held on Thursday.
“It is not a question of how many are not working,” an environmentalist said, requesting anonymity. “Even if one field is broken, you are not meeting the required conditions and, therefore, clearly violating legal requirements. Why is Lakvijaya measured with a different yardstick to other organisations in the country?”
Lakvijaya has also been running without a valid environmental protection licence (EPL) since June last year. But the old one clearly specifies that particulate matter must be below 150 milligrams per cubic metre (mg/Nm3).
“The particulate matter output in untreated flue gas is 12332 mg/Nm3,” the environmentalist said. “To get it below 150 mg/Nm3 which is the national standard, the minimum ESP efficiency should be around 99%.”
Another vital environmental protection device called the flue-gas desulphurizer (FGD) was also broken for ten days and repaired only this week, internal sources said. This was confirmed by the WPCEA but denied by the Ministry. This instrument removes sulphur dioxide from the flue gas.
The FGD in question is also in unit 1. “We have a seawater FGD,” said the environmentalist earlier quoted. “The smoke out of the boiler first goes through the ESP which removes the dust by using electrostatic charges. The seawater FDG then removes the sulphur dioxide from the filtered smoke. The problem is that the FGD will not work properly if the ESP is not functioning well.”
Fly ash is toxic, he pointed out. With the ESP not working at optimum levels, part of this matter gets discharged into the ocean. “So now we have sea pollution on top of the ESP problem,” he said. “Without the FGD, the pollution is in the atmosphere. With it, it’s in the sea. Either way it’s bad. And the CEB still hasn’t shut down the unit to fix the ESP.”
The activist pointed to another environmental issue at Norochcholai. “The cooling towers need a lot of water,” he said. “This is obtained through three ocean intakes. There is a screen that is intended to stop larger fish and shellfish going through the pipe. However, a huge quantity of shellfish and large fish are also getting caught and killed. There is a mountain of dead marine life stacked in the ash dump.”