Plant-Based Demolition

August 05, 2024
By: Larry Trojak

With coal as a power source continuing its fall into economic and environmental disfavor, the power plants that once demanded a continuous stream of fossil fuel are being decommissioned, shuttered and slated for demolition. While that process has been tough on the communities that supported the plants, getting them down has proven a boon for demolition companies skilled at tackling projects of that scale. NDA member Trifecta Services Company is one of those, having established itself as experts in no fewer than a half-dozen recent major power plant demo projects. On one of the latest it has undertaken, a Cleveland-area site that was formerly one of the largest coal-fired plants in the world, the company is utilizing modern tools to bring down outdated technology.

Avon Calling

Sitting on prime Lake Erie shoreline, the now-decommissioned Avon Lake Power Plant is being leveled to make way for a complete reimagining of the area. Plans being discussed include the creation of a new park and green space that will connect the city of Avon Lake to the lakefront, a public beach area and a good deal of private development that will include office space, restaurants, shops, bars and residential housing.

Getting the site ready for that transition is the focus of Tom Batronis, a Trifecta senior project manager heading up the job. He says that demos of this type are in Trifecta’s DNA.

“This will be the sixth power plant we’ve done in the last seven years,” he says. “In fact, we are also doing a smaller plant in Middleton, Ohio, at the same time we are out here; however, Avon Lake is one of the bigger plants we’ve done to date. But, even given its size, we are more than well-equipped to get the job done safely, and on time. It’s just what we do.”

Founded in 2015 by seasoned demo professionals Mark Lee, Ryan Sensale and Sam Shah, Trifecta Services Company brings its clients a full complement of demolition skills — with a definite focus on safety. While the “Trifecta” in the company’s name alludes to the founding trio, it also serves to highlight its strengths in remediation, demolition and recycling. All three of those were put into play at the Avon Lake project.

Recover and Repurpose

Given that the Ohio plant originally went online more than 100 years ago, a surfeit of hazardous material in need of remediation was expected — and encountered. That effort was hampered for the first year Trifecta was on site, however, by a need to maintain power to filter water from a still-existing 36,000-ton coal pile. With that pile finally moved, the abatement subcontractor came in to begin their facet of the job, eventually removing more than 3,000 tons of asbestos waste. 

With remediation complete, Batronis says they ramped up, starting with system shutdowns, implementing a universal waste removal effort, pulling all the nonferrous out and salvaging whatever assets they could.

“We’ve sold a lot of material that was left behind when the plant closed,” Batronis says. “There are companies out there interested in many of the things we recovered — used valves, transformers, etc. We even recovered hundreds of fire extinguishers, which we donated to the local fire department for refurbishing. As a company, we make a real effort to either repurpose or recycle whatever we can.”

Trifecta then focused its efforts on structures in the massive 1.3 million-square-foot coal yard, as well as a series of large conveyors that traversed the plant. “For all our structural cutting and processing, we relied on a pair of Genesis mobile shears, a smaller GXT 335 mounted third-member on a high reach Volvo 750 and a GXT 995R mounted second-member on a Volvo 480,” Batronis says. “Both attachments provide an excellent cutting force, with the 335 also benefiting from its ability to access upper areas on-site. There was, of course, some extremely hearty structural on-site — beams with 8” flanges, for example — that needed torching. However, both attachments were extremely productive for us and ideal for a majority of the work at hand.”

Ashes to Dust

The advantage of the high reach and the GXT 335 was particularly evident when dealing with the ash unloading area at Avon Lake. Measuring 20,000 square feet and nine stories tall, the structure was used to store fly ash captured by any of several electrostatic precipitators prior to emissions leaving the exhaust stack. There, the ash was stored in silos then loaded into trucks and disposed of at a permitted landfill.

Some areas of the site demanded alternative demo techniques, most notably a huge precipitator next to the ash area that measured more than 120,000 square feet and stood eight stories tall. “While we could have used the shear on that, we actually opted to shoot it in order to clear the way for subsequent demo of a 610’ smokestack,” Batronis says. “But, with all that resolved, the GXT 335 went to work bringing down the ash unloading structure.”

Even though there is a decent amount of working room at the Avon Lake site, Batronis says controlled demo is still the name of the game. “And that’s exactly what we get with these attachments,” he says. “Utilizing almost all of the 118’ of reach he had, our operator worked top down, bay by bay, on that ash unloading structure until it was gone — all in less than 10 weeks. It was a textbook example of the right tools for the job.”

Taking the Back Road

While the GXT 335 was busy bringing down those structures, Trifecta had a second, larger mobile shear at work processing heavy structural steel in an area closer to the lakeshore. Dubbed “the back road,” it is a location that once housed a good deal of infrastructure. “That area used to include the plant’s massive pipe rack, which held all the utilities, as well as many of the components that treated emissions coming out of the boiler before entering the stack,” Batronis says. “With those components down, we positioned the Genesis 995R there to process all that scrap — and more. In terms of tonnage, that shear was the workhorse of this operation, processing material with thicknesses up to 3” and getting it ready for shipment to an area recycler.”

For the length of the project thus far, scrap has been hauled away in unprepared form, a decision that Batronis says is driven by economics. “While decent, the price for scrap right now is not high enough to warrant cutting it to prepared sizes,” he says. “For us, it’s more beneficial to just get it off the site and open up some working room. So, we have the 995R doing just that — all day long.”

Boils Down to This

The lifeblood of any coal-fired power plant is its boilers, and, at its peak, Avon Lake had 12 of them of varied heights. Boilers 1 through 8 — the original eight units when the plant was built — are each about 100’ tall. However, as components were added to ensure regulatory compliance, the height of each new boiler increased. “As a result, boilers 9 and 10 are about 150’ tall; unit 11 sits just under 190’; and boiler 12 tops out at roughly 225’,” Batronis says. He added that those latter imposing heights, far more than can be accessed with their high reach, essentially dictate the method of demolition for each.

“So, the first eight boilers are going to be done conventionally; that is, they’ll be demoed mechanically with our shears. Boilers 9 through 12, on the other hand, will be brought down via implosion and processed using both Genesis shears. It’s an efficient way to get things cleared out of an area and move on.”

Not Big Enough

Despite being on the Lake Erie waterfront and more than 41 acres in size, the Avon Lake site still does present some space-related logistical challenges for Trifecta. Those constraints factored into the demo sequence following the completion of the initial eight boilers.

“After the boilers are down and processed, the high reach machine with the GXT 335 will once again be called upon to begin work on a large structure used to house the site’s turbines,” Batronis says. “We will then move on to the 6/7 precipitator on the north side of the boilers, which will open up an area for us to drop both a 490’ stack and another precip that sits adjacent to it.” He said that same process will continue for the duration of the project with the balance of precips and boilers coming down and being processed for removal. Only the 525’ #7 stack will remain, a landmark and reminder of what once was.

“This is going to be a very nice area once we wrap up and redevelopment starts,” Batronis says. “By project’s end, we estimate that we will remove and recycle about 84,000 tons of scrap. Many of the structures on-site are brick and, while most of that material is being used for fill, the township of Avon Lake has asked us to save a good portion for a project they have planned. So, in a sense, the plant will be gone, but not forgotten.” The Avon Lake project is on track for a May 2025 completion.