‘Sludge’ cause of black smoke at power plant

BLACK smoke seen billowing out of a Teknecik power plant chimney stack (pictured left) on Wednesday was caused by “sludge” and not “poor quality fuel” oil as claimed by a union, the head of the Cyprus Turkish Electricity Authority (Kıb-Tek) said.

Cyprus Turkish Electricity Authority Workers Union (El-Sen) leader Kubilay Özkıraç had said in a statement that technical teams at the power station had “not encountered bad fuel like this before” and that the “poor quality fuel” also adversely affected the generators and caused malfunctions.

“The fuel purchased without a tender and without analysis is so bad that our teams have to change the filters twice a day,” Mr Özkıraç said.

“If public health is threatened in this way, the promised generator investments are not made, and bad fuel is purchased before checks are completed, the union will initiate all kinds of actions, including shutting down the power plant.”

Responding to El-Sen’s claims, Kıb-Tek board of directors chairman Turan Büyükyılmaz stated that in order to meet increasing energy needs due to the excessive heat, the first unit of the “steam turbine power plant” was put into use on June 28, and that “sludge fuel” was also being used.

Mr Büyükyılmaz stated that in order to prevent energy cuts and meet energy needs, the power plant is being operated at “high capacity”.

“In addition to this situation, it has been observed that the smoke gets darker from time to time due to the use of some watery sludge in the steam power plant’s daily fuel tank,” he said.

“The colour of the smoke coming out of all the chimneys, including the steam plant chimney, has changed to the routine working standard colour.”

Mr Büyükyilmaz stated that samples were taken from each incoming batch of fuel by an “independent observer company” in accordance with the standards and under the supervision of Teknecik personnel.

These samples are then sent to an “internationally accredited laboratory” for analysis, a “routine practice in fuel purchases and within international standards”.

“In the analyses performed by the internationally accredited SGS (Supervise Gözetme Etüd Kontrol Hizmetleri A.Ş.) company in their Mersin laboratory [in Turkey], the test results of all parameters are within the limit values defined in the technical contract,” Mr Büyükyilmaz stated. “Based on this, the claims that poor quality fuel is being used are unfounded.”

Meanwhile Mr Büyükyılmaz announced on Wednesday that Kıb-Tek had purchased 60 megawatts of electricity from South Cyprus through an interconnected system.

The purchase was made to help cope with soaring demand for energy caused by an increase in the use of air conditioners due to temperatures as high as 43C.

However the extra electricity was still not enough to prevent power cuts, he said, due to three diesel-powered generators being out of service.

Two of the generators have since been repaired, Mr Büyükyılmaz said, with a total of one thermal and seven diesel turbines now in operation.