The Marion County Solid Waste-to-Energy Facility (the “Facility”), owned and operated by Covanta Energy (the “company”), receives, stores, and burns acceptable waste to produce electricity. Covanta Marion Inc. is required to operate the Facility in accordance with applicable permits and environmental standards. The technology used is a process generally known as “mass burn” in which solid waste is burned with little or no pre-combustion processing taking place at the Faciltiy. Mass burn technology has been used successfully in Europe since the early 1900’s and in the United States since 1970. The faciltiy is similar to more than 350 facilities in operation throughout the world.

The facility operates two (2) Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)-fired combustors (MWCs) capable of processing 550 tons/day and producing 300Mw/day using the Martin technology. In addition to firing MSW, each unit is capable of firing natural gas as auxiliary fuel during startup and shutdown. The steam produced by the MWCs is piped to a turbine generator with a nameplate capacity of 13.1 Megawatts. The electricity produced flows to electrical switch gear and then over an interconnection line into the Portland General Electric Company (PGE) grid system. Approximately 11.5 megawatts per hour of the 13.1 megawatts per hour produced is sold to the local utility (PGE).

• Diagram of Process (Diagram)

• Pollution Control

o Air emissions are controlled by high efficiency combustion within the furnace/boiler as well as by selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR), spray dryer absorbers, fabric filter baghouses and an activated carbon injection system.

• Highly efficient combustion controls potential organic pollutants as well as carbon monoxide.
• The SNCR system injects ammonia into the furnace to control nitrogen oxide emissions;
• Spray dryer absorbers utilize a lime/water slurry mixture to control the boiler outlet gases. The lime slurry mixture neutralizes acid gases, such as sulfur dioxide and hydrogen chloride and cools the outlet gases as well;
• The fabric filter baghouse removes particulate matter (fly ash) and provides a secondary acid gas neutralization surface on the filter cake; and,
• The activated carbon injection system controls mercury emissions.

o CMI also utilizes state-of-the-art continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS). The CEMS measures the stack gas for emissions, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, oxygen and opacity and allows the control room to continuously monitor the performance of each combustor unit. The CEMS data is reviewed and summarized into a report, which is routinely submitted to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and EPA for review.