Coming out ahead with the Clean Air Act

This paper reports that the Clean Air Act (CAA) Amendments of 1990 require utilities to reduce the constituents of acid rain, sulfur dioxide (SO{sub 2}), and nitrous oxides (NO{sub x}). Reduction strategies involve modifications to all aspects of the operating system, from the boiler proper and associated equipment, fuel systems, existing pollution control equipment and controls. Millions of dollars will be spent on these modifications. To recoup some of these costs, it is economically beneficial to make performance upgrades at the same outage. The potential savings can come in many different ways including: Improving efficiency; Reducing forced outages; Increasing capacity; Piggy-backing outages. Boiler modelling to verify furnace exit gas temperatures for a fuel switching or gas conversion analysis can also be used to determine the adequacy of materials throughout the boiler.