J.M. Stuart Station was a 2.3-gigawatt (2,318 MW)

coal power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide there are about 2,500 coal-fired power stations, on average capable of generating a gigawatt each. They generate ...

located east of

Aberdeen, Ohio Aberdeen is a village in Huntington Township, Brown County, Ohio, United States, along the Ohio River southeast of Cincinnati. The population was 1,515 at the 2020 census. History Aberdeen was founded by James Edwards in 1795 and platted by ...

Adams County, Ohio Adams County is a county in the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 27,477. Its county seat and largest village is West Union. The county is named after John Adams, the second President of the United States. Geogr ...

. The power plant had four units and was operated by AES Ohio Generation, a subsidiary of the

AES Corporation The AES Corporation is an American utility and power generation company. It owns and operates power plants, which it uses to generate and sell electricity to end users and intermediaries like utilities and industrial facilities. AES, headquarte ...

. It began operations in 1970 and ceased on May 24, 2018.

History

Construction of J.M. Stuart commenced in 1966 with Units 2, 1, and 3 beginning commercial generation in 1970, 1971, and 1972 respectively. The plant became fully operational with the completion of Unit 4 in 1974. The total cost of building Stuart was $390 million. The plant was named after James M. Stuart, a former chairman of

Dayton Power & Light DPL Inc. (aka DP&L Inc.) is a subsidiary of AES Corporation. Through its subsidiary AES Ohio (formerly The Dayton Power and Light Company, and DPL Energy Resources), DP&L sells to, and generates electricity for, a customer base of over 500,000 pe ...

(DP&L). Although the plant's cooling source was the

Ohio River The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its river mouth, mouth on the Mississippi Riv ...

, its discharge egressed into Little Three Mile Creek. In the 1980s, Stuart was an early adopter of the

prompt gamma neutron activation analysis Prompt-gamma neutron activation analysis (PGAA) is a very widely applicable technique for determining the presence and amount of many elements simultaneously in samples ranging in size from micrograms to many grams. It is a non-destructive method, ...

(PGNAA), a

coal analyzer Coal analyzers are bulk material analyzers used by coal producers, coal preparation plants, and coal-fired power plants to determine coal quality in real time. Coal quality parameters of greatest interest include ash, moisture, sulfur, and energ ...

, that increased on-line reliability for the plant. In August 2014,

Duke Energy Duke Energy Corporation is an American electric power and natural gas holding company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company ranked as the 141st largest company in the United States in 2024 – its highest-ever placement on the ...

sold its stake in the coal units to

Dynegy Dynegy Inc. is an electric company based in Houston, Texas. It owns and operates a number of power stations in the U.S., all of which are powered by fossil fuels. Dynegy was acquired by Vistra Corp on April 9, 2018. The company is located at 601 ...

American Electric Power American Electric Power Company, Inc. (AEP), (railcar reporting mark: AEPX) is an American domestic electric utility company in the United States. It is one of the largest electric utility companies in the country, with more than five mi ...

(AEP) held a 26% stake in the coal units through a subsidiary. Operations at Stuart were transferred from DP&L to AES Ohio Generation in October 2017.

Closure

DP&L announced plans in March 2017 to close J.M. Stuart along with its sister plant

Killen Station Killen Station was a 618 megawatt ( MW) dual-fuel power generating facility located east of Wrightsville, Ohio in Adams County, Ohio. The power plant had two units: one coal-fired and one oil-fired. At the time of its closure, it was operated b ...

due to economic and environmental challenges in an agreement with the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the Pro ...

and several unnamed parties. Electricity generation at Stuart ceased on May 24, 2018. In December 2019, DP&L sold the site to Kingfisher Development for remediation and redevelopment.

Environmental mitigation

During construction of Unit 4, a

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove heat and cool the ...

was commissioned by

Cincinnati Gas and Electric Cinergy Corp. ( ) was an energy company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, from 1994 to 2006. Its name is a play on the words "synergy", "energy", and "Cincinnati". History Cinergy was created on October 24, 1994, from the merger of the C ...

(CG&E) (a forerunner of Duke Energy) in order to meet pollution control mandates set by the State of Ohio. Its four smokestacks were upgraded with

electrostatic precipitator An electrostatic precipitator (ESP) is a filterless device that removes fine particles, such as dust and smoke, from a flowing gas using the force of an induced electrostatic charge minimally impeding the flow of gases through the unit. In c ...

s to prevent

fly ash Coal combustion products (CCPs), also called coal combustion wastes (CCWs) or coal combustion residuals (CCRs), are byproducts of burning coal. They are categorized in four groups, each based on physical and chemical forms derived from coal combust ...

from being released into the atmosphere. Stuart was the test site for the Low- Cell Burner (LNCB) designed by

Babcock & Wilcox Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. is an American energy technology and service provider that is active and has operations in many international markets with its headquarters in Akron, Ohio. Historically, the company is best known for their stea ...

. The LNCB project utilized Unit 4 over a duration of 53 months from 1990 to 1994. The test confirmed that a LNCB can reduce

nitrogen oxide Nitrogen oxide may refer to a binary compound of oxygen and nitrogen, or a mixture of such compounds: Charge-neutral *Nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen(II) oxide, or nitrogen monoxide * Nitrogen dioxide (), nitrogen(IV) oxide * Nitrogen trioxide (), o ...

() emissions by more than 50%, but the

carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a poisonous, flammable gas that is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the si ...

(CO) emissions were inconclusive. Each unit at Stuart was retrofitted with

selective catalytic reduction Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) means converting nitrogen oxides, also referred to as with the aid of a catalyst into diatomic nitrogen (), and water (). A reductant, typically anhydrous ammonia (), aqueous ammonia (), or a urea () soluti ...

(SCR) systems between 2003 and 2004 by

Black & Veatch Black & Veatch (BV) is a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company based in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Founded in 1915 in Kansas City, Missouri it is now headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. It specializes in ...

. The SCRs were installed to comply with the Clean Air Act's 1990 amendments and Ohio's State Implementation Plan (SIP).

Flue-gas desulfurization Flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) is a set of technologies used to remove sulfur dioxide () from exhaust flue gases of fossil-fuel power plants, and from the emissions of other sulfur oxide emitting processes such as waste incineration, petroleum ...

(FGD) equipment, designed by Black & Veatch with assistance from the

Chiyoda Corporation is a global engineering company specialized in oil and gas midstream for gas processing and LNG, downstream refinery and petrochemicals facilities design and construction. Chiyoda is headquartered in Yokohoma, Japan with engineering offices ab ...

was installed at J.M. Stuart in 2008. The FGD equipment reduced 97% of the plant's

sulfur dioxide Sulfur dioxide (IUPAC-recommended spelling) or sulphur dioxide (traditional Commonwealth English) is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless gas with a pungent smell that is responsible for the odor of burnt matches. It is r ...

() emissions. In order to support the FGD process, a smokestack was constructed.

Incidents

An electrical arc flash killed two employees in October 1994. DP&L was levied a $295,000 fine by the

Occupational Safety and Health Administration The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA; ) is a regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. The United States Congress established ...

(OSHA) for hazardous safety practices. A worker was killed in July 2006 when a pile of fly ash slipped back into the pond burying the equipment and the worker. On January 10, 2017, an explosion occurred at Unit 1 injuring six people. The plant had to be temporarily shut down while DP&L investigated and assessed the explosion. The plant began a restart the following month. DP&L never restarted commercial generation of Unit 1 after the incident.

Archaeological site

The lands owned by DP&L for J.M. Stuart contain the Greenlee Tract. This tract was used by Native Americans in the past over an 8,000 year period and later settlers in the 19th Century. As DP&L looked to expand its fly ash disposal areas in the 1990s, they funded a study to determine the archaeology resources of the Greenlee Tract.

Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

was conducted on the tract periodically from 1991 to 2011. Over 200,000 artifacts were collected revealing human activity from the

Pre-Columbian era In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

and from the early 19th Century. The site of Stuart Station also included a small cemetery with the graves of five pioneer families of Adams County - Bradford, Ellis, Grimes, Kimble, and Moore. DP&L, under the direction of Chief Civil Engineer C. Russell Dole, researched the family genealogies, gained permission to remove the graves from the closest kin, and reburied the families at Manchester Cemetery in Manchester, Ohio. A dedication ceremony took place on October 30, 1963.

References

External links

* {{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171015044158/http://www.dplinc.com/about/corporate-overview/locations/stuart-station/, date=October 15, 2017, title=DPL Page for Stuart Station Energy infrastructure completed in 1970 Energy infrastructure completed in 1971 Energy infrastructure completed in 1972 Energy infrastructure completed in 1974 Buildings and structures in Adams County, Ohio Former coal-fired power stations in Ohio Archaeological sites in Ohio 1970 establishments in Ohio 2018 disestablishments in Ohio AES Corporation