Chicago Airport Goes Up For Sale

Airport public-private partnerships got a big boost in February, when Chicago secured approval from major airlines to issue a request for proposals for a 50-year lease to operate Midway International Airport.

The RFP calls for operation of Midway’s 1-sq-mi facility, including five runways, the 43-gate, 941,000-sq-ft passenger terminal, 43,000 sq ft of concession space and 13,500 parking spaces. Capacity of the airport, located 10 mi from downtown Chicago, handles more than 19.1 million passengers and 304,000 takeoffs and landings.

Local news reports peg the deal’s value at about $3 billion, but the city is not naming a price. Chicago spent nearly $1 billion in 2004 to rehab the aging airport, and it plans to use the lease proceeds to pay off airport debt, offset pension obligations and make infrastructure improvements.

The deal would positively impact the city’s future budgets for years to come, says John Kenward, a Chicago director for Standard & Poor’s, like Midwest Construction, a unit of McGraw-Hill.

The city already has raised $2.4 billion through private leases of its Skyway viaduct and Millennium Park underground parking lots, and it is looking to lease parking meters and recycling facilities. Once bidders are identified, closing the lease contract could take nine months to a year, says Lisa Schrader, Chicago’s finance deputy.

First-Ever System for Carbon Capture Installed

In what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind installation in the United States, a chilled-ammonia-based carbon-capture technology has been constructed at a 1,124-MW power plant in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from a coal-fueled generating facility.

The technology has the potential to reduce of cost of removing carbon dioxide from pulverized coal power plants, thereby enhancing the environment through reduced emissions that contribute to global warming.

The power plant is operated by Milwaukee-based We Energies, and the carbon-capture facility built as part of the project is complete. No cost was released.

The patented process was invented by Eli Gal, a COMING -based scientist. He has licensed France’s Alstom Power to operate the carbon-capture technology worldwide.

The chilled ammonia technology aims to achieve an efficient carbon capture rate of carbon dioxide emissions. The technology is a three-step process.

It begins with the cooling and conditioning of the flue gas from the boiler and existing air quality control system. The flue gas then proceeds to the CO2 absorber where the CO2 is absorbed through contact with an ammonium carbonate solution.

The solution containing the absorbed CO2 is pumped to a generation system. As this solution is heated under pressure, the absorption process is reversed and pure CO2 is recovered. The solution with CO2 removed is recycled back to the CO2 absorber while the pure CO2 from the regenerator is further compressed for eventual disposal underground.

The process has the potential to capture 90% of the CO2 in the flue gas, WE Energies says.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Electric Power Research Institute will collect data and evaluate technology performance. The results are anticipate to be published in mid-2009.