Brunner Island Steam Electric Station


Brunner Island Steam Electric Station is a coal-fired electrical generation facility in York County, Pennsylvania. It occupies most of the area of the eponymous island on Susquehanna River. The power plant has three major units, which came online in 1961, 1965, and 1969, with respective generating capacities of 334 MW, 390 MW, and 759 MW. In addition, three internal combustion generators were installed in 1967.

Environmental impact

, the owner of the plant at the time, announced in 2005 that it would begin to install scrubbers at the plant and that installation would be complete by 2009. The scrubbers, PPL says, are intended to annually remove 100,000 tons of sulfur. The facility was cited as one of several facilities in the region by a USA Today study of air quality around area schools as a potential source of significant pollutants. Fly ash from the Brunner Island facility is approved for use in construction projects, especially for "use in concrete mixes to reduce alkali silica reactivity of aggregate."

Sulphur dioxide emissions

In 2006, Brunner Island ranked 27th on the list of most-polluting major power station in the US in terms of sulphur dioxide gas emission rate: it discharged of SO2 for each MWh of electric power produced that year. Scrubbers began operation in 2009, removing about 90-percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, and they reduce mercury emissions. They spray a mixture of crushed limestone and water onto the exhaust gas before it goes out the plant's chimney. Sulfur reacts with the limestone and water in the plant's exhaust, forming synthetic gypsum. This is collected and shipped to a drywall manufacturing company.

Waste heat

Brunner Island discharges all of its waste heat into its brand new cooling towers as of 2009.