SunCoke Energy nears operation

The company will supply  AK Steel with a key ingredient to make steel.

SunCoke helps AK lower raw material costs

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By Chelsey Levingston, Staff Writer 11:11 PM Sunday, October 2, 2011

MIDDLETOWN — One of the largest and most controversial construction projects in Butler County is nearly finished, and operations are expected to start at SunCoke Energy this month.

The coke-producing plant built just in the Middletown city limits near the border with Monroe will start supplying one of the county’s largest employers, AK Steel Corp., with a key raw material, but critics say the plant never should have been built for environmental concerns.

The company announced in 2007 it was building the $400 million Yankee Road plant that some have said means the area’s rich history of steel making is here to stay for many years.

“More than the jobs, it gives AK a reason to be here and stay here and be vested in the area,” said Denise Hamet, acting economic development director for the city of Middletown.

The first of 100 coke ovens at the plant will be heated with natural gas beginning in the second half of this month, said Mike White, SunCoke Energy vice president of operations. Once the ovens are heated, which takes about two weeks, they will be charged, or loaded, with coal. The first charge is expected to happen in November, White said.

After 48 hours in the oven, the first coke will be produced, he said. The ultimate goal is for the company to make 550,000 tons of metallurgical coke and 46 megawatts of electricity a year.

Construction started April 2010, after more than a year’s delay because of legal actions against the company.

They leave behind approximately 115 permanent hourly production and salary jobs. There were also about 30 contractor jobs for maintenance, White said.

Meanwhile, two legal cases — about the plant’s environmental permit and to have the city of Monroe’s attorney fees paid in its fight against the plant — are unresolved, said Jack Van Kley of Van Kley & Walker law firm, one of the city’s attorneys.

The city of Monroe has spent more than $1 million in four separate legal cases to fight the construction of the plant because of environmental concerns for its residents.

By the time the hearing for the permit is heard by the Environmental Review Appeals Commission in January, the plant will be in full production making coke for AK Steel.

Three separate parties — Monroe, SunCoke Watch Inc. and Natural Resources Defense Council, and Robert Snook of Monroe — are appealing the plant’s current air permit. Their cases will be heard together in January.

Lisa Frye, president of SunCoke Watch, said two of their concerns are that the plant violates the Clean Air Act because the company had to certify it was in compliance at its other facilities to build a new one, and to get a New Source Review air permit, the company must show it improves air quality. Those requirements haven’t been satisfied, Frye said. She said the company went back 10 years to get air credits to offset pollution, but nothing changed today to offset pollution.

“We’ve come this far; we’re certainly not going to quit. We haven’t wavered,” she said.

There have been other cases involved with the plant besides the ones with Monroe, including oral arguments heard Sept. 6 in a case of a Monroe resident seeking compensation from the city of Middletown because the Monroe resident believes the rezoning for the property with the coke plant was unconstitutional, according to court documents.

SunCoke won’t start making 550,000 tons of metallurgical coke and 46 megawatts of electricity right away. The plant will have a ramp-up period for the first almost six weeks before it starts charging and pushing coal and coke at full operation.

After the ovens are heated to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 60 of a total 100 coke ovens will be charged or loaded with coal. Then the environmental control system will be started and then the remaining 40 ovens charged, White said.

Under SunCoke’s permit, it has 40 total days of uncontrolled emissions to get started, according to White and the monitoring agency Hamilton County Department of Environmental Services.

Also initially, less coal will be put in the ovens and more coal will be put in with each charge until they are at full capacity, White said.

Once the ovens are heated up, there’s no going back.

The coke ovens are made of 3.6 million bricks that have pieces of cardboard between some of them holding them together. When the ovens are heated up, the brick expands and the cardboard is burned, White said. Literally, the ovens must never fall below 1,500 degrees or else the bricks could contract and the ovens fall apart or cause some other significant damage, he said.

The coal bakes in the ovens for 48 hours until it makes coke, a coal product that has all its volatile materials and sulfur removed by the heat until almost 100 percent carbon is left, said Bruce Steiner, president of American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute.

Coke-making facilities have an estimated 30-year life, according to SunCoke. If the plant needs maintenance before or after that, White said it can be done while the ovens are hot. He said SunCoke has a total 1,050 ovens that have never had a catastrophic failure.

“We plan to operate this plant for a long time,” White said.

By the numbers

550,000

Tons of metallurgical coke  to be made annually.

115

Permanent employees, plus more on contract for maintenance.

$400M

Cost of project.

$1M

Minimum legal costs for Monroe.

Sources: SunCoke Energy, Monroe

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