Industrial Responsiblility

	HOME	INFORMATIONAL POSTINGS	CAREERS	SITE MAP	CONTACT US

	Community Involvement & Environmental Stewardship


	Community & Environment

	Community
		Community Involvement
		Quintana History

	Environment
		Environmental Stewardship
		Industrial Responsibility
		Nature Conservancy
		Bird Habitats
		Cultural Resources

INNOVATIVE AIR TOWER TECHNOLOGY REDUCES NOx EMISSIONS

Typical LNG regasification facilities utilize boil-off gas (a portion of the LNG) to fire heaters in order to regasify the remaining LNG, thus creating nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. NOx is a compound that has been associated with air pollution. Freeport LNG uses a different, patented system that is designed to draw heat from the air to regasify the LNG. This process involves the use of towers which are similar to cooling towers that are commonly used in many industries.

During summers (and much of the spring and fall) along the Texas Gulf Coast, large amounts of heat can be taken from the air with the proper equipment. Freeport LNG designed a tower that utilizes this ambient air temperature. This technology allows Freeport LNG to operate its plant within the Houston-Galveston non-attainment area since the towers don’t emit NOx at all. During cooler weather, when there’s not enough heat in the air, we convert to heaters similar to other LNG terminals. While it will vary from year-to-year, we expect that the warming tower can be used for up to eight months of a year. In summer, when ozone and NOx levels typically rise in the Houston-Galveston airshed, Freeport LNG’s warming towers won’t contribute to this rise.

Resource Recycling during Construction

Freeport LNG, along with its construction contractors, made a commitment to recycle materials within the site to save costs and utilize existing resources. We have been able to recycle soils, rock, concrete material and vegetation that existed on-site. To build up the terminal site, we used almost 750,000 cubic yards of material from two dredge material placement areas and excavation material from the marine berthing area. This avoided having to purchase and haul this fill material to the site, reducing traffic on the island. Sand from dry excavation of the marine berthing area was also screened and used as padding during pipeline construction.

Concrete left from various construction activities was broken into usable sizes for riprap and other applications. For example, after driving nearly 1,200 tank piles to the proper depth the tops were different heights above ground. In order to make them the same height, the tops were crushed off, and the crushed concrete has been used as permanent flow dissipaters at the entrance to the stormwater pond.

We also recycled plants at the site. Before impacting construction areas, usable vegetation was harvested and replanted. This recycling effort supplied all of the plants for the 10-acre mitigation area along the Intracoastal Waterway, saving the need to buy or borrow plants from wetland areas outside the project site.

Spill Control

No matter how good your equipment, no matter how tight your maintenance and training programs, no matter how carefully you operate, when you operate equipment you will have spills and leaks. The difference comes in how you respond to these spills. The Freeport LNG terminal site is literally surrounded by water, so leak/spill response is of utmost importance. We designed and implemented task-specific spill kits that contain spill containment and cleanup components for specific types of spills and for each specific area where spills could occur. We have first response kits on or near each piece of equipment and equipment operators that respond quickly to spills. Any spill of hydrocarbons, no matter how small, is documented and cleaned up. Soils and cleanup materials are properly contained and transported to facilities that are licensed to handle these products. With our commitment and practices, we continue to meet our goal to have no spill incident that reaches a waterway.