Indianapolis Power and Light (IP&L) operates a 1,730 MW coal-fired generating station in Petersburg, Indiana. As part of their vision of excellence in environmental performance, IP&L’s Petersburg Station uses 100% of the gypsum produced in their scrubbers for the manufacture of wall board. Prior to the improvements made by this project, fly ash was hauled to wall board manufacturers via truck. PCI designed a rail spur and a fly ash load out system to load fly ash at a rate of 200 TPH.

PCI provided mechanical, electrical, civil, structural, and controls engineering services to design a rail spur with a fly ash loading station. The rail spur has capacity for three rail cars. Fly ash is transferred from the silo to the loading station via an air slide. Since the storage silos are located remotely from the power generating station, an air compressor, receiver, and dryer system was also installed. The loading station includes an articulating loading boom and snout that seals to the top of the rail car during loading operations. The transfer of ash is controlled via an operator control room at the loading station where the operator can control filling operations and rail car weight.

To improve fly ash storage and transfer to the rail load out, the two ash storage silos were cross-tied to allow fly ash to be transferred from the scrubbers to either silo and from either silo to the load out station. PCI designed the cross-tie piping and supports.

In keeping with IP&L’s environmental vision, dust collection at the silos was upgraded via the replacement of the existing silo dust collector with a larger, technologically improved, dust collector to handle the increase in displaced air due to ash transfer. A dust collector to capture dust at the load out station was also installed.

PCI learned during the design phase of the project that the existing truck loading facility would not need to be removed and could remain in operation giving IP&L even more flexibility to supply fly ash to industrial users.

These improvements were installed in two phases. During phase 1, the rail spur, loading facility, air slide, control room, and platforms were installed. The new dust collector and cross tie piping were installed during phase 2. Both phases were installed ahead of the required start up date and the total upgrades were completed within the budget of $769,000.00