An Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) ad hoc committee yesterday approved Formosa Petrochemical Corp’s (FPCC) plan to replace petroleum coke with coal in two circulating fluidized beds (CFB), but rejected its proposal of a new process for converting lime into gypsum.
The company consumes about 700,000 tonnes of petroleum coke and 368,000 tonnes of limestone per year in its two CFBs, which are used to generate vapor and electricity to supply energy to the naphtha cracker in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮).
If the EPA allows it to replace petroleum coke with coal, it would consume about 998,640 tonnes of coal per year, but it could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 199,253 tonnes per year, the company said in a report yesterday.
As it would use a type of coal that contains about 0.8 percent sulfur, which is much less than the 8.5 percent in petroleum coke, the replacement would also reduce the company’s polluting emissions, it said.
The company also applied to increase its use of a process that converts lime, which is used to absorb sulfur oxides produced in petroleum coke combustion, into gypsum, saying the process fits with the government’s promotion of a circular economy.
While most reviewers on the committee supported the company’s goal of reducing pollution, they said lime conversion is a significant process, for which the company should apply for a separate in-depth review.
The company’s application to change its fuel has the appearance of a smoke screen to cover up its real intention of disposing of large amounts of lime produced in petroleum coke combustion that has found no buyers for, committee member Wu Yi-lin (吳義林) said.
It is typical of FPCC to bury a substantial request within a seemingly insignificant application, Southern Taiwan Anti-Air Pollution Alliance convener Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said.
Coal combustion still creates pollution and the company should use natural gas instead, she said.
Yunlin Environmental Protection Bureau secretary Shen Su-yuan (沈淑妧) advised the company to mix in a certain ratio of alternative fuels, such as garbage that has been mechanically and biologically treated.
However, committee chairperson Liu Shi-ping (劉希平) said garbage treatment is a complicated issue and should not be discussed at the review meeting.
After the two-hour meeting, the committee recommended that the EPA pass FPCC’s application to change its fuel, but rejected its application to apply the new conversion process.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching