Enviance, Inc. has released a report from this week’s EUEC 2012 conference revealing that more than 60 percent of attendees believe carbon pricing will affect their businesses this year. The survey was completed by 237 North American energy and utility industry professionals.

Officials with the state of Ohio ordered injection wells shut down after several minor earthquakes occurred on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25.

As power plant designs have evolved over the past 50 years, top boiler pressure i.e. superheated high pressure turbine inlet conditions, has increased dramatically.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it will develop standards for wastewater discharges from natural gas extraction from underground coalbeds by 2013 and shale formations by 2014.

Officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said radioactive water may now be leaking from a wastewater storage facility at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Ameresco Inc. and City of Dallas Water Utilities (DWU) completed a 4.3 MW biogas energy recovery facility.

American Electric Power chose GE’s ABMET wastewater bioreactor system at AEP’s 1,300 MW Mountaineer coal-fired power plant in West Virginia.

A water treatment system that can turn wastewater into clean water has been shown to reduce potential environmental impacts associated with producing natural gas from shale formations in the U.S. Appalachian basin.

GE will install its zero liquid discharge (ZLD) wastewater recycling technology at the 600 MW Russell City Energy Center (RCEC).

EPA said safeguards against fish and aquatic animal impingement will be required for all facilities above a minimum size. It said closed-cycle cooling systems may also be required when appropriate. A final rule is due in July 2012.

Heat transfer depends on the efficiency of contact between air and water flowing through a tower, which means that cooling tower fill design is critical to air-water mixing.

In order to maintain optimum operating conditions in a FGD wet scrubber, a purge stream is discharged from the system to control the absorber equilibrium chloride concentration and acid insoluble fines from the reagent limestone. The FGD purge stream contains high concentrations of dissolved solids (e.g. chlorides), heavy metals, suspended solids (gypsum and limestone inerts) and dissolved inorganic nutrients (for example, nitrogen and phosphorous compounds).

The Ultrasonic Contact Probe is made to measure PD activity on the surface of sealed enclosures, where the use of microphones to pick up ultrasonic emissions is impractical due to a lack of air paths or vents.

Many power plants and other industrial facilities utilize open recirculating cooling systems equipped with cooling towers for heat transfer from condensers and other heat exchangers. Cooling towers commonly sit well away from the main plant, and it is often possible to forget about them until something goes awry. This article outlines the fundamentals of heat transfer in a cooling tower and important issues for maximizing heat exchange.

Lessons learned from Three Mile Island should serve as a model for coal and oil industry preparedness.

UOP, a unit of Honeywell, was awarded a $1.5 million cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Energy for a project to demonstrate technology to capture carbon dioxide and produce algae for use in biofuel and energy production.