Chemical Engineering August 2012 - 12

CHEMENTATOR
Plant
Methane recovery
from a trona mine
L
ast month, Solvay Group (Brussels,
Belgium; www.solvay.com) unveiled
a methane recovery system (the MaRS
Project) that captures methane liberated
by mining trona ore (trisodium hydrogendicarbonate
dihydrate), and pipes
the gas to nearby processing facilities as
a fuel for process heating. Sodium carbonate,
a key ingredient in making glass,
soap, paper and other products, is the
major component recovered from trona.
The first-of-its-kind system in the U.S.
complies with U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.)
air-quality and safety regulations on
mine ventilation, while simultaneously
reducing the operation's greenhousegas
footprint by combusting waste mine
methane. The methane recovery system
is now fully operational at Solvay's
trona mining and refining operations
near Green River, Wyo.
Methane liberated from rock strata
during mining is pumped to the surface
Compressor
Pre-drilled
Incinerator
Pump
Vent
stack
by creating negative pressure in a small
drillhole that allows the gas to exit underground
mining areas. The liberated
gas is then compressed and piped to a
Solvay facility about four miles from the
borehole field. There, the waste methane's
thermal energy is put to use in
a large dryer used to remove moisture
from the final product, soda ash.
To date, the patent-pending, closedloop
system has prevented about
150,000 metric tons (m.t.) of carbondioxide-equivalent
(CO2e) from entering
the earth's atmosphere and is currently
registered with the Climate Action Reserve,
a voluntary carbon registry. The
methane recovery system has the capacity
of harvesting enough liberated methane
to equal about 300,000 m.t./yr CO2e,
says Solvay senior vice president and
site manager Ron Hughes. He believes
MaRS can double that total over time.
Circle 3 on p. 60 or go to adlinks.che.com/40270-03
12 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM AUGUST 2012

http://www.solvay.com http://adlinks.che.com/40270-03 http://WWW.CHE.COM

Chemical Engineering August 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering August 2012

Contents
Chemical Engineering August 2012 - Cover1
Chemical Engineering August 2012 - Cover2
Chemical Engineering August 2012 - Contents
Chemical Engineering August 2012 - 2
Chemical Engineering August 2012 - 3
Chemical Engineering August 2012 - 4
Chemical Engineering August 2012 - 5
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Chemical Engineering August 2012 - Cover3
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