Times are challenging enough without market outlets closing to hard pressed mineral suppliers. Late 2009 witnessed an unwelcome announcement from Exelon Power, one of the USA’s leading power suppliers, regarding its plans to permanently retire coal fired units at two of its plants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Exelon’s power plants at Cromby and Eddystone are unique in the USA in that they consume a significant volume of caustic calcined magnesia (CCM) in their flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) scrubber units to the tune of up to 23,000 tpa CCM.
Most FGD applications in North America use lime or limestone which is considerably cheaper. As to why Exelon uses CCM in the first place, Marie Fortier, senior category manager chemicals Exelon Corp. told IM: “Quite simply, the plants were built to use MgO versus lime. It is expected that the MgO demand should begin to taper off...