Guarantee Completes $20M SunCoke Project

Guarantee Electrical has completed a $20 million assignment to power and supply all process/instrumentation wiring, equipment commissioning, lighting and voice/data services for a new Metallurgical Coke Manufacturing/Heat Energy Recovery Facility built by SunCoke Energy on a 300-acre site in Granite City, IL

The new facility houses 120 computer-monitored, heat-recovery ovens to apply SunCoke's proprietary negative pressure technology to transform anthracite coal into up to 650,000 tons of blast furnace coke annually. The coke produced is rated the highest quality in the world, while the process is cited as the gold standard by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because pollutants generated while the coal is baked are incinerated inside the ovens, eliminating the need for a chemical byproducts plant and disposal of hazardous waste. The facility also produces approximately 500,000 pounds of superheated steam per hour that is routed to a cogeneration facility at the neighboring US Steel Granite City Works. Operating at full capacity year-round, the steam generated by the SunCoke plant can produce up to 65 MW of electricity annually.

On peak days, Guarantee coordinated the work of 170 electricians with that of more than 900 workers from other trades responsible for the installation of the boiler/heat recovery system; coal and coke conveyors; coke/heat recovery ovens; and flue gas desulfurization/environmental systems.

All told, Guarantee crews terminated 25,000 wires; installed 161 lineal miles of electrical cable and three lineal miles of cable tray; wired more than 2,200 instruments; laid 7.5 lineal miles of underground conduit; installed 5.5 lineal miles of ground wiring; powered 1.5 lineal miles of coal/coke conveyors; built four electrical rooms with 5kV switchgear and 480V motor control centers; energized six 1,200-psi steam generators,120 coke ovens and a flue desulfurization plant; wired a coke wharf, quench tower and coke-screening station; and enabled a high-speed fiber-optic communication system. Guarantee also distributed 15,000 kVA of power at 5 kV across the site.

"Our ability to prefabricate conduit, cable tray support brackets and a significant percentage of wire pulls off-site, coupled with the application of our proprietary ‘constructability' workplace model were key to us helping meet owner and EPA deadlines for coke production ramp-up," said Mike Maxwell, Guarantee project manager. "To implement "constructability," Guarantee engineers in St. Louis and on the jobsite created explicit instruction documents for the tasks of a given workday which were distributed to craft workers in Granite City. By detailing wiring/installation sequencing and procedures, "constructability" eliminated installation guesswork and downtime.

The contractor devoted a full-time safety director to the SunCoke site and sustained only one OSHA-recordable incident while logging 174,000 man-hours on the high-risk assignment.

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