RICHLAND, Wash. — Plans to replace diesel-generated steam with electrically generated steam at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) are getting a funding boost from a recent $5 million DOE Assisting Federal Facilities with Energy Conservation Technologies Program grant.
The grant will partially fund the addition of a steam plant that uses electric boilers — instead of the current plant that uses diesel-powered boilers — to supply steam for WTP waste treatment processes.
Hanford’s tank waste treatment mission is vital to site cleanup, but energy intensive. This grant will allow Hanford to significantly reduce carbon emissions by substituting electric boilers for the diesel-powered boilers, with potential savings to the government of millions of dollars a year in energy and maintenance costs. The addition of an electric steam plant for WTP will also allow Hanford to make significant progress toward achieving the net-zero emissions goals of an executive order aiming to catalyze clean energy industries and jobs through federal sustainability.
“We’ll see a triple payback because, thanks to the grant, we can now free up $5 million in funding that would’ve been earmarked for the project,” shared Elaine Porcaro, EM’s chief engineer at Hanford who submitted the grant application. “Once the electric boilers are installed, we’ll save millions more per year in energy cost savings. We can do a lot with those cost savings every year by reinvesting it in cleanup.”
This article was originally published by a www.energy.gov . Read the Original article here. .