With large-scale investments in research and development, this innovative company is cutting emissions through clean-burn
technologies
Written by Sarah Wolfe and Produced by James McCann
Most people don’t know it, but 51 percent of the country’s electricity comes from coal. It takes three pounds to power a laptop computer and the average person uses more than 30 pounds of coal each day.
For some, the idea of coal power sparks images of tall factory stacks belching out black smoke, like for an environmental ad. In reality there have been vast improvements since the 1990s in stack-scrubbing equipment to cut down emissions. What’s more, there’s an industry-wide trend towards clean coal technology, which is showing great promise.
“Clean coal burns more efficiently inside the boiler that generates electricity,” says Mike Ferguson, Vice President for Taggart Global LLC. “When you increase the efficiency in the boiler, you decrease the amount of emissions - the carbon, sulphur and metals associated with coal, and have less impact on the environment.”
Taggart is an international design, engineering and construction company with expertise in turnkey design, supply, construction and commissioning of coal processing plants and material handling systems. It provides a full range of services to the worldwide mining, steel making and power generation sectors.
“Since 2007, we’ve expanded our focus to not only clean coal preparation plants, but to service the material handling and coal blending at utility plants, as well as the gypsum handling systems for scrubber technology,” says Rick McCormick, Taggart’s CEO.
The company is on the front lines of clean coal technology, investing hundreds of thousands in research and development.
“We’re pursuing pre-boiler technology through strategic alliances. It actually binds the non-carbon constitutes into an inert state through the combustion process,” Ferguson says. “In analysis of ash and emissions, we’re seeing reductions in materials like mercury, as high as 90 percent. We’re not at the commercial stages yet, but we’re not far from it. The technology is emerging and very close at hand.”
Company Evolution
Taggart has seen tremendous change in its 16 years. It was founded in 1993 as Sedgman USA, a joint venture based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with the owners of Sedgman Australian. Its mission was to upgrade US coal preparation plants with modern technology. In 1996, the company expanded to a full turnkey operation by founding Southern Cross Construction in Beckley, West Virginia. Its business flourished in the Appalachian area and Illinois Basin.
“In the 1990’s, I had started a company in China that sold clean coal technology to China-based coal companies. The company was representing many US companies and our sales volume was growing each year,” McCormick says. “In 2000, I convinced Sedgman’s primary owners, Larry Watters and Dan Placha, to form a company in Beijing which focused on the design and construction of new coal preparation plants and upgrades to existing coal preparation plants. That was about the same time China was awarded the 2008 Olympics, and as we all saw this past August, China was committed to presenting its country to the world in the best possible light, particularly from an environmental perspective. The Chinese government therefore announced a new policy to wash at least half of the coal used in its power plants by 2006 in order to help reduce air pollution as washed coal burns much cleaner than unwashed coal. Prior to that time, the Chinese typically burned unwashed coal. Needless to say, our timing could not have been better.”
McCormick spent the next four years developing Taggart China. At the beginning of 2001, while the US market was experiencing a slowdown in the coal industry, the Chinese demand for clean coal equipment and coal preparation plants was exploding.
“We were growing while most of our competition was downsizing. Since 2001, we’ve built more than 48 clean coal preparation plants in China,” McCormick says.
In 2006, Sedgman Australia went public on the Australian stock exchange and the Austrailian-based owners had to exit from their US-based interests and withdraw the license for the Sedgman name. The Pittsburgh-based owners therefore brought in a Houston-based private equity group as a new minority owner and changed the name of the Company to Taggart Global, LLC, with Taggart Global China, LLC and Southern Cross Construction becoming subsidiaries. The private equity group, known as Quintana Energy Partners, is led by Corbin Robertson II, who also serves as the CEO of Natural Resource Partners (NRP), a publicly traded Master Limited Partnership that owns over two billion tons of coal reserves in the United States.
In 2006, Taggart and NRP entered into a Memorandum of Understanding whereby they together seek opportunities for NRP to capitalize and own and Taggart to design, build and operate coal infrastructure projects in the United States. Taggart and NRP have undertaken four preparation plant and material handling projects under this program.
In 2007, Taggart purchased Robertson P&E, a Charleston, West Virginia-based electrical engineering company that primarily works for clean coal technology groups, and renamed it Taggart Electrical. In 2008, Taggart acquired a 51 percent interest in Jim Harrison Design Associates, an engineering firm based in Johannesburg, South Africa that also specializes in coal preparation and handling projects.
One of the most recent developments at Taggart is its entry into strategic partnership with Ausenco, publicly traded international engineering and project management group based in Brisbane, Australia. Together, Taggart and Ausenco intend to undertake coal preparation and handling projects in Australia and other Pacific Rim locations under the moniker of “AusTagg”. Another is an alliance agreement with Natural Resource Partners in which NRP will supply the capital and Taggart will build the facilities and operate it under its TagOp Company for the Coal Company.
Rapid growth
Through its various acquisitions, Taggart has experienced tremendous growth. It’s revenues have increased 30 percent each year from 2000 to 2005 and then doubled from 2005 to 2006. Also, Taggart has grown from 15 employees in 1993 to roughly 775 today. Two current employees in the Taggart process engineering department and the project management group, respectively, are McCormick’s sons, JR and Chris.
Taggart maintains an open-door environment with its associates, one its had since its early days as a small company. It provides financial support for employees to attend training or earn degrees and offers scholarship money to every employee’s child as long as they maintain their grades. Ferguson himself has three daughters in college enjoying the benefit.
The company also holds weekly safety classes at job sites and has a safety awards program that involves work practices and safety suggestions.
Projects and the economy
In addition to China, Taggart and its employees have performed work in Colombia, Mexico, India, Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines. It’s built some of the largest coal preparation facilities in the world from the ground up, attracting international clients like RIO Tinto, Glencore, Anglo Coal, Peabody and BHP Billiton.
“We built a material handling facility for a coal coking facility for Sun Coke in Vitoria, Brazil, which was in excess of US $100 million dollars. We completed it in summer of 2007 and then in China we built a 4,000 ton-per-hour clean coal preparation plant for Shenhua,” McCormick says. “In the US, one of the largest facilities we’ve built was a complete clean coal system for the Cline Resources Gatling facility that takes the coal from an underground mine, processes, cleans and stores it, and then delivers it to the AEP Mountaineer and Sporan Power Plants, all by conveyor systems.”
Taggart shares the concern of its industry now that the recession’s hit.
“For us, we’re seeing projects delayed and some forecasted projects canceled. Fortunately we have a large backlog of existing projects that will carry us through 2009,” McCormick says. “We’re very concerned, however, about 2010 and whatever happens with energy legislation.”
Cutting-edge technology
Taggart hopes its innovative technologies can keep it ahead of the game. It has done extensive research and development with its vendors, such as Krebs, Conn-Weld and Peters Equipment, to create the most efficient products possible for customers. The company patented a process for fine coal recovery that reduces ash, sulphur and mercury using very inexpensive spiral technology that saves on the amount of expensive floatation chemicals needed – reducing operating costs.
It also designs plants with a modular system that reduces the overall size, therefore reducing the energy need for conveyors and pumps, and allows access to all equipment with an overhead crane to reduce maintenance costs. The company also developed a cyclone technology that is the most advanced and
efficient cleaning method
for fine coal.
“Through 10 years of testing, it can be used on fine coals down to 325 mesh,” says McCormick.
Taggart’s research and development has also cut the equipment needed in plants by almost 40 percent because of improved efficiency.
Spreading the word
The biggest challenge Taggart faces is not the economy, but educating the public, Ferguson says. He believes most people don’t understand that more than half their electricity comes from coal, or that it can meet environmental regulations at a cheaper cost than wind or solar.
“We work through trade associations like American Coal Council to spread the word,” he says. “Coal is our greatest energy source and we can’t neglect it.”
Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia, where Taggart has a location and lots of clients, has been a strong advocate for the industry.
“We also work very closely with the West Virginia Coal Association,” McCormick says. “If we can pull that education and move it nationally it would be a huge benefit. Being in front of clean coal technology, Taggart has many opportunities to help the US with clean coal burning.”