By Gary Smith, Regional Manager

Every morning, travelers on Interstate 95 in central Maryland witness the sunrise behind the silhouette of the Baltimore skyline. One iconic feature of this landscape is the massive exhaust stack featuring a bold-lettered “Baltimore” written down the side. It’s a landmark for residents and commuters alike, and over the past year, the city’s skyline has been looking a little different. The luffing jib of a Cianbro Manitowoc 16K now casts its silhouette next to the “Baltimore Smoke Stack” in the morning light over the city. That machine and the Cianbro team on site are gearing up to perform the last of three major overhauls as part of a larger upgrade project at the WIN Waste Wheelabrator Baltimore facility.

The purpose and goal of the project is to reduce the net air emissions produced by the 64.5MW waste-to-energy incinerator. The project involves demolishing the existing Electrostatic Precipitators (ESPs) on each facility’s three incinerator boilers and retrofitting with three new, state-of-the-art Hitachi Zosen-Inova fabric filter baghouses.

Each unit requires the erection of more than 2,000 tons of structural steel, and each new fabric filter baghouse is modularized to streamline construction. The upgrades include the construction of three new electrical rooms on deep pile foundations to provide power and control for the new fabric filter baghouses. In addition to the modular baghouse compartments for each unit, Cianbro will also construct a new inlet duct, which feeds the boiler exhaust air through the existing scrubbers into the new fabric filter baghouses, and a new outlet duct, which ties the exhaust side of the fabric filter baghouses to the induced draft fans flowing air to the stack. The scope also includes the installation of various mechanical piping, electrical, instrumentation, and monitoring/control systems for each unit.

Another significant project component is the construction and retrofitting of a new Automatic Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction (ASNCR) system, in which urea is injected into the furnace to react and reduce the NOx emissions from the boiler. This portion of the project includes the installation of urea distribution skids, boiler injection nozzles and bent tubes, purge water system, and compressed air system to tie into the facility’s existing metering equipment before demolition of the existing SNCR systems on each unit.

Our client’s goal is to provide cleaner air to the community in Baltimore. Cianbro and our trade partners are proud to have had the opportunity to participate in that.

The project is being constructed by unit to maintain facility operations during demolition and construction.

The projected timeline for the WIN Waste Wheelabrator facility in Baltimore includes:

• Unit 3’s demolition began in March 2022 and achieved mechanical completion by the end of June 2022.
• Unit 2’s demolition commenced in August 2022 and achieved mechanical completion at the beginning of November 2022.
• Unit 1’s demolition is scheduled to begin in March 2023, with anticipated project completion by July 2023.

Click the link to read more about our 2022 projects in this year’s edition of The Chatter.