PORT ANGELES — Nippon Paper Industries USA’s upgraded $85 million cogeneration plant, which company officials had planned to have fully online in November 2013, is operating but not fully.
It’s “still in the tuning phase,” mill Manager Steve Johnson said Tuesday.
“We’ve got environmental testing scheduled in the near future, and we are still ramping up,” Johnson said, estimating that tests will occur in January.
The boiler should be in uninterrupted operation by late spring, he predicted.
The plant’s old and new cogeneration boilers burn biomass — woody forest debris — to produce steam to run the paper mill.
The new boiler, expected to produce 20 megawatts of electricity for sale, has been generating electricity that Nippon is selling, Johnson said.
“The market still remains tough, and I am still working on additional customers,” he said.
Johnson said the boiler is fully capable of running at its rated capacity.
“We are continuing to tune and troubleshoot what I would describe as very minor problems,” he said. “Once we have successfully passed our environmental tests, we will ramp it up and get up to full production.”
Nippon’s electricity-producing cogeneration plant, which has never been up and running full bore, shut down completely March 11 this year after cracks were discovered in the boiler’s 25-ton, 30-foot-long mud drum.
The mud drum has been replaced, and Nippon and Covington, La.-based FSE Energy, which built the boiler, are in litigation over who is responsible for the fix, Johnson said.
Johnson said the company does not plan to sell only electricity once the cogeneration plant is operating uninterrupted.
“The cogeneration plant, as it’s built, is a very efficient plant, but it needs the paper mill, and the paper mill needs it,” Johnson said.
Port Townsend Paper Corp.’s $54 million project to upgrade its own cogeneration plant and produce up to 24 megawatts was abandoned earlier this year by company officials who blamed environmental challenges and inexpensive natural gas for dooming the effort.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
