Gas, Oxford Energy plans to sell power at 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, beginning in
1993. Under the agreement, the rate increases gradually over time to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2005. Oxford Energy has submitted applications to the City of Lackawanna and the State of New York for the necessary permits. At this time, it is not clear whether the plant will be constructed, since two other competing waste projects are also being considered for the site. 4) Nevada Power Plant. Late in 1989, Oxford Energy also announced plans to build a 30 MW tire-to-energy plant at Moapa, Nevada near Las Vegas. This planned facility, similar to the Sterling Power Plant, would burn tires from California and Nevada. The arid environment at the plant site is ideal for minimization of any mosquito problems associated with tire storage. Oxford Energy is proceeding with the permitting process and they have already filed for air quality permits. In conclusion, whole-tire-to-energy power plants with a reciprocating grate system and state-of-the-art air pollution controls have proven practical, both in the US. and West Germany. With the completion of the Sterling plant, there will be the capacity in the U.S. to turn 14 million tires per year into electricity. It must be emphasized that two keys to successful operation of such plants are proximity to tire sources and adequate buy-back rates for the electricity y generated by the plants. b) Tire Manufacturing Plants. Two Firestone tire plants have installed pulsating floor furnaces to dispose of scrap tires and other solid wastes (2). The two Firestone tire-burning furnaces are located in Des Moines, Iowa and Decatur, Illinois. They were built in 1983 and 1984, respectively. The furnaces were designed by Basic Environmental Engineering, Inc. of Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Currently, only the Decatur incinerator is operating. The Des Moines incinerator was shut down in 1987 for exceeding opacity limits. The Des Moines plant produces very large agricultural tires, which are much more difficult to burn without opacity problems than the passenger tires produced at Decatur. Reopening the Des Moines incinerator would probably require the addition of a baghouse, which is not economically feasible. Each of the two incinerators has the capacity to burn 100 tons of waste per day and produce approximately 20,000 pounds per hour of steam for use in the tire manufacturing process. Twenty-five per cent of the load to the incinerator is whole tires and rubber scraps. The remainder consists of paper, wood, and miscellaneous solid waste. The percentage of rubber does not exceed 25 percent so that the flue gas can stay within the opacity limit. Even though only one quarter of the weight of the load is tires, the tires account for 80 percent of the Btu consumed by the furnaces, Both furnaces are fed by the same type of system, utilizing a charging hopper and a hydraulic ram, The ram pushes the solid waste into a primary combustion
52