EVANSVILLE — The president of a planned facility to convert coal to diesel fuel in northern Spencer County said the facility will be much cleaner than people fear.
Riverview Energy Corporation's proposed $2.5 billion project would turn coal into ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel using a process called direct coal hydrogenation.
It would be located in Dale, on a 550-acre site annexed by the town last year.
Opponents of the project remain skeptical and some town and area residents have expressed health concerns about it. The county ranked 23 for toxic releases among all United States counties included in the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory. Indiana ranked sixth for overall pounds of toxic chemical releases but first in terms of total toxic chemicals released per square mile.
Company president Greg Merle said the process would use heat and pressure to liquify pulverized coal, adding hydrogen to create the fuel. About 1.6 million tons of coal a year would fuel the process. It would produce an estimated 4.8 million barrels of diesel fuel and 2.5 million barrels of naphtha (used in making plastics, solvents and gasoline). Sulfur removed during the process also would be marketable, Merle said.
"Everything produced by the process is marketable. No waste will be stored on site. Everything it produces we can sell and use," Merle said.
The ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel the process would produce would have even less sulfur content than the 15 parts per million mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Merle said.
Since Dec. 1, 2010, the federal government has required that all diesel fuel sold in the U.S. be ultra-low sulfur diesel.
However, he acknowledged that there are no similar facilities operating in the United States to compare it to. He said the project development is being privately financed but would not rule out seeking a government loan or funding in the future.
"I think the whole thing is bogus. It's an experiment," said John Blair, president of the Evansville-based environmental organization Valley Watch.
He criticized the pace of the project for skipping steps in development that would allow for a demonstration process to iron out potential bugs.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) is reviewing Riverview Energy's air pollution permit for the project.
The application indicates the facility would emit carbon dioxide — one of several greenhouse gases linked to global warming and climate change — at a rate of 2.2 million tons per year.
Annual emission rates for other federally-regulated pollutants, according to the application, would be: Nitrogen dioxide, 184 tons; carbon monoxide, 255 tons; sulfur dioxide, 120 tons; 56 tons of fine particulates; 139 tons of volatile organic chemicals and 32 tons of hazardous air pollutants.
Merle calls those figures "precautionary" limits and said the plant would not actually emit up to those levels.
Brady Hagerty, an IDEM spokesman, said those numbers are the maximum a facility would be allowed to emit.
Merle said the technological process itself is a closed-loop system that would have minimal emissions.
"This whole process is under pressure. We can't vent anything," Merle said.
The technology is licensed from KBR (Kellog Brown & Root), a Houston-based global engineering and construction company. KBR is a former subsidiary of Halliburton.
Buried deeper, on page 60 of the 205-page permit application prepared by KBR, is a table that provides a different take on the plant's pollution potential.
It summarizes modeling results, or projections, of how the facility might impact air quality according to what is allowed under the federal Clean Air Act. The modeling shows Riverview's pollution emissions would generally take up only small percentages of the PSD (Prevention of Significant Deterioration) — the total increase in various pollutants the Environmental Protection Agency would allow in a region to keep air quality at levels protecting public health.
According to KBR's modeling, the proposed coal-to-diesel plant's nitrogen oxide emissions would take up 3 percent of the total increase the EPA allows for that pollutant — a contributor to ozone pollution — in the region.
The same table indicates another pollutant that also is often a concern in Southwestern Indiana, fine particle pollution, would account for 6 percent of the allowable increase for that pollution.
It will be IDEM's job to check whether the modeling and technical data for Riverview are correct before issuing the project an air pollution permit.
KBR first began offering to license the technology, called Veba Combi Cracker (VCC), in 2010, and it is not currently in use anywhere in the Americas or Europe.
However, the process is reportedly being used successfully at facilities in China and Russia, according to Merle.
Blair remains skeptical.
"We don't have any idea what they (plants in Russia and China) are putting out and what the feed stock (fuel type) is," he said.
Merle said he chose Spencer County, and specifically Dale, for the project after his proposal to build a similar facility in Vermillion County fell through in 2016. He said Dale's proximity to railroad service, highways and the Ohio River, as well as Indiana coal reserves and its geographic proximity to markets, make it an ideal location.
The project would rely on the consumer market for power to operate.
"The idea for this project was to create a new industry for coal and find alternative uses for coal," Merle said. "There are cleaner ways of using this fuel than burning it."