by Kevin R. Collins, President & CEO

Platts Coal Trader, one of our industry's most influential trade publications, wrote a story today about our plans to incorporate the enhanced Bechtel design into our future plants. With their permission, we're posting the article here.

Platts Coal Trader

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Posted With Permission

Testing done, Evergreen seeks commercial site

Despite idling its Fort Union plant in Gillette, Wyoming, last week, Evergreen Energy remains confident in its K-Fuel technology and is ready to build commercial facilities in the US and abroad under Bechtel Corporation’s new plant design.

Evergreen Energy refines low-rank coal into a higher-Btu fuel for use in utility and industrial boilers.  Since 2005, Evergreen has done 20 to 25 test burns at the Fort Union plant as well as amassed a database of more than 100 coals shipped in from around the world to undergo testing at the facility.

 "We’re through with testing facilities,” Evergreen Energy CEO Kevin Collins told Platts in a telephone interview on Tuesday.  “We’re looking at commercial plants now.”

Collins said the new plant design would give the industry what it’s looking for right now: a cost-effective, efficient facility.  While Collins wouldn’t discuss price specifics of the redesigned plant compared with the Fort Union facility, he did explain where those savings in efficiency and eventually cost would come from.

The engineering firm Bechtel has redesigned the facility to use four processors to refine the coal instead of two, boosting plant capacity from 1.5 million short tons per year of K-Fuel up to almost 30 million st/year.  Given the high coast of plant material, the new design will use less structural steel, cement, small-bore piping, conduits and cable, which will help lower the overall cost of a plant.

Evergreen is trying to locate a plant as quickly as possible in the right location, Collins told Platts.  The company is looking for a site with access to “multiple feedstocks, transportation routes as well as proximity to markets,” Collins said.

A good multiple-feedstock area could be in the Midwest, which would give Evergreen access to Powder River Basin and Illinois Basin coals.  A facility in Ohio or in the Great Lakes region would offer not only river but also land access.  Collins also mentioned Texas as a good location because of its access to lignite.

While Evergreen has idles the Fort Union facility, it is keeping several maintenance workers in place (PCT 3/25). 

“We want to try to maintain that plant: we want to have the ability to gear it up,” Collins said. 

While it would take time to move equipment like the two processors from the Fort Union plant to a new commercial facility, it could be done, Collins said.

Evergreen Energy Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of Evergreen Energy and Sumitomo Corporation, is currently in talks with an Indonesian mining group on the possibility of building a 1.5 million st/year K-Fuel plant and terminal facility on the island of Kalimantan.

There is a demand for higher-Btu coals in Asia, and Evergreen’s technology could turn Indonesia’s low-rank coal into a more marketable product, Collins told Platts.  A terminal facility in this area would give Evergreen access to potential customers in Japan, Vietnam and India.