12/18/06 Goodbye plumes, hello steam scrubber

It's just a matter of time and Treasure Valley residents won't be seeing huge steam plumes coming out of the smokestacks at a Nampa processing plant. Amalgamated Sugar Company spent 16 million dollars on a state of the art steam scrubber which is now being phased in. HUFF "So it actually dries the pulp or the insoluble part of the sugar beet using superheated steam. What they will enable us to do is to shut the rotary drum driers down which are coal fired that were put in in the late 50's and 60's." Vice president for operations Joe Huff says Amalgamated's coal consumption will go down by 200 tons per day and in the future coal will only be used to heat water for steam. Huff says they had an agreement the Division of Environmental Quality under an operating permit that was issued in 2002. HUFF -"With that came five year compliance schedule and within the compliance schedule this steam dryer was part of that process." This new steam scrubber is the largest such dryer in the world. Huff says it's a complicated piece of equipment with a three thousand horsepower fan. HUFF "It's a Danish design, a European design but built in the United States." They'll be working the kinks out the system the next couple of days. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott