Matters of General Interest Op-Ed:Inco to further cut Sudbury emissions

Inco (N-T, N-N) will build a $115-million facility using fluid bed roaster (FBR) off-gas scrubbing technology to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 34% at its operations in Sudbury, Ont.

Known as the FBR SO2 Abatement Project, the initiative is expected to lower allowable emissions to 175 kilotonnes annually, down from the current regulatory limit of 265 kilotonnes. The project should be finished by year-end, but could be up and running as early as the fall.

“This project continues a steady decline in SO2 emission levels at Inco’s Ontario operations since 1970,” says Inco chairman and CEO Scott Hand. “We are committed to doing even more to improve our environmental performance, and continuing to invest in new and innovative solutions to reach our goal of a 75% reduction from current emission limits by 2015.”

Inco’s goal is to lower SO2 emissions to 66 kilotonnes by 2015.

The FBR project has the added benefit of decreasing total metal emissions of nickel, copper, arsenic and lead by 80 to 100 tonnes per year. With this latest improvement, Inco will have cut total metal emissions at its Copper Cliff smelter by 80% over 1988 levels, and reduced overall SO2 emissions by 90% since 1970.

Inco says it has spent almost $1 billion to cut SO2 emissions in Sudbury since anti-pollution legislation was introduced in Ontario in 1986.

Fluid bed roasting is part of the smelting process where nickel sulphide is roasted to make nickel oxide feed for carbonyl refining. The FBR SO2 project involves construction of a gas-cleaning facility adjacent to the existing FBR plant at the smelter; expansion of the acid plant to handle clean SO2 from the new gas-scrubbing facility; and the addition of a weak acid treatment plant at the Copper Cliff filter plant to treat the metals scrubbed by the gas-cleaning facility.