Several times a day — during lunch breaks, shift changes, process transitions — the coal-fired steam plant serving Wilson, N.C., tobacco-processing facility of independent leaf-tobacco merchant Alliance One International, Inc. would drop below 30,000 lb per hour of facility demand and, unable to modulate lower, be forced to vent excess steam into the atmosphere, resulting in excessive energy use. In 2013, RMF Engineering teamed up with Concord, N.C.-based AC Technical Services to design and build a new natural-gas-fired steam plant for Alliance One.
