GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A new natural gas boiler has arrived at Georgia Pacific’s Broadway mill, and will soon change more than just how the plant is powered.
The new boiler will produce steam to power the Broadway Mill for Georgia Pacific. That means the massive piles of coal behind the building will soon be phased out, along with the smoke stacks – well known icons of Green Bay’s skyline along the Fox River.
“There has been a lot of sustainability investment at the Broadway Mill. One certainly will be the disappearance of the coal. Another thing we’re seeing is, of course, us taking down the stacks we no longer need,” Public Affairs Manager Mike Kawleski says, “Certainly the silhouette of the mill is changing, but also kind of a landmark in the city of Green Bay as well.”
One 400-foot tall stack is already down and the second stack will come down in the next couple of years.
The boiler, made by St. Catharine, Ontario-based Trenergy Incoporated, is one of the largest the Canadian manufacturer sells – measuring in at nearly 30 feet tall, 23 feet wide and 40 feet long. The price tag – including purchase, shipping, and installation – costs approximately $28 million. It also weighs nearly 200 tons, making it a serious feat to move.
As for squeezing the behemoth of a machine into the facility, it takes a complicated process using a lot of different technology.
“The natural gas boiler will make it’s way to the power plant via a computer controlled trailer that has a number of axles under it that keeps it level all along the trip to the power plant…Then it’ll make it’s way through an alley on a railway system and turntable, which will spin the massive boiler and push it through a hole in the wall of the building there,” Kawleski tells WTAQ News, “If it weren’t for 3D modeling of the building itself and computers, it would be a much more difficult task to squeeze it into where it needs to go…With our first natural gas boiler, there were literally just inches of clearance on either side of the boiler to get it into the building. So that will be a very similar process this time as well.”
Kawleski says the goal of sustainability is in part to move away from burning coal – but also just to be good neighbors, as they operate right in the heart of the city.
The boiler is expected to be up and running within the next few months.
