Power June 2023 - 24

CUG PLANT OF THE YEAR
appropriately (Figure 3).
Yet, some small amount of dust is
3. Powder River Basin coal, which has a subbituminous ranking, presents unique challenges
compared to other coal rankings, which makes proper stockpile management very important.
Courtesy: Platte River
Coal Handling Improvements
Yet, the area that CUG identified as lacking
in Rawhide's original Plant of the Year
nomination was its coal system, so that's
where the real improvements needed to
be made. The station started by adding
a new rotary car dumper (RCD) dust collector
(Figure 2). " That probably had the
single-biggest impact, " said Michie.
Before the upgrade, after every third
80-car unit train was dumped, workers
would have to clean up dust that was
more than a foot thick at the bottom of
the Grizzly, which is a feeder that helps
with proper sizing of the coal. Workers
had considered that a " cost of doing
business, " in other words, somewhat inevitable.
Upgrading to the new dust collector
system made a huge difference,
and it came with a new way to handle
the dust after collection
Previously,
the
dust was
simply
dumped back on the conveyor belt, which
meant the same dust might end up being
handled again somewhere down the
line in multiple other locations where
dust was accumulating. With the new
system, all the dust that gets collected
from the RCD is pneumatically conveyed
up to the tripper deck. After that, it goes
through the mill and into the boiler, eliminating
the potential for re-handling.
To ensure they fully understood improvement
opportunities, Platte River's
team sought help from Burns and McDonnell,
an engineering firm with headquarters
in Kansas City, Missouri, and
offices around the world, to conduct a
full combustible-dust study, looking at
all parts of the system so they could prioritize
next steps. Among other improvements,
the plant upgraded a couple of
transfer chutes, and installed carbon
monoxide (CO) monitoring on a couple
of underground coal conveyors. The
24
monitoring provides indication of smoldering
coal, which greatly improves how
quickly problems can be identified and
dealt with.
The group still sees room for improvement,
however. During the unit's
next major outage, there are plans to
replace a couple of more dust collectors,
which should eliminate additional
hazards. Still, money only goes so far
in solving problems; in the end, the
commitment of plant personnel is really
what's necessary to become an
award-winning facility. Michie noted
that Rob Martin, fuel handling supervisor
at Rawhide Unit 1, has been vital
to the plant's success. Martin and his
team manage the PRB coal and all of
its hazards. They ensure the stockpile
is compacted adequately and capped
inevitable at a coal plant, which is why
housekeeping is so important. " We take
an extra 24 hours during a major outage
to bag up all the electrical systems-
it creates huge problems for our I&C
team-and we firehose down the entire
inside of the building just to get rid of all
that coal dust that you just can't get to
otherwise. Big investment, but totally
worth it, " said Michie. The station also
has a standard housekeeping policy to
conduct weekly washdowns of the tripper
gallery, coal silos, conveyors, and
RCD. " It's thousands of hours a year
that get invested just in housekeeping, "
he said.
A Magical Site (and Sight)
" One of the things about Rawhide is:
it has some element of magic, " said
Brodie Griffin, the plant's technical services
manager. Griffin was referring to
the look of the facility and its majestic
location. He said the first time he
drove across the reservoir dam road approaching
the facility, he knew he wanted
to work there. Not only is the plant
picturesque, but off to the southwest,
there are views of Rocky Mountain National
Park and Longs Peak, which, at an
elevation of 14,259 feet, towers above
all other summits in the park. " And, you
know, Colorado has 300-plus days of
sunshine, so I was pretty much sold before
I even stepped foot inside the facility, "
said Griffin.
The sentiment seems to be widespread
among Rawhide workers (Figure
4), as at least a few got emotionally
choked up talking about the pride they
felt in the plant receiving the award. " We
all completely and absolutely adore that
facility, and we really want what's best
for it, " said Griffin. " Our commitment
to maintaining the assets, and then our
commitment to improving those assets
over time, that's really contributing to our
success, " he said.
As Hunter noted at the start, Raw4.
Rawhide workers take pride in ownership
of the plant, which comes across whenever
they talk about the facility, such as during this
tour led by Technical Services Manager Brodie
Griffin (on the right). Courtesy: Platte River
www.powermag.com
hide's not perfect, but that's OK. " It's
not about being perfect. It's about doing
good stuff with great people, " Bob
Taylor, an executive committee member
and CUG secretary, said. Rawhide's got
that aspect covered. Congratulations
Platte River, and especially the team at
Rawhide Unit 1. Your group is obviously
deserving of the CUG's most prestigious
award. Well done! ■
-Aaron Larson is POWER's
executive editor.
POWER | June 2023
http://www.powermag.com
Power June 2023

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