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Monday, January 01, 2007 China's Coal FutureTo prevent massive pollution and slow its growing contribution to global warming, China will need to make advanced coal technology work on an unprecedented scale. By Peter Fairley
A visitor arriving in Shanghai immediately notices China's technological conundrum. Through the windows of the magnetically levitated train that covers the 30 kilometers from Pudong International Airport to Shanghai at up to 430 kilometers per hour, both the progress the country is making and the price it is paying for it are apparent. Most days, a yellow haze hangs over Shanghai's construction frenzy. Pollution is the leading cause of death in China, killing more than a million people a year. And the primary cause of pollution is also the source of the energy propelling the ultramodern train: coal. To keep pace with the country's economic growth, China's local governments, utilities, and entrepreneurs are building, on average, one coal-fired power plant per week. The power plants emit a steady stream of soot, sulfur dioxide, and other toxic pollutants into the air; they also spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide. In November, the International Energy Agency projected that China will become the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in 2009, overtaking the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously anticipated. Coal is expected to be responsible for three-quarters of that carbon dioxide. And the problem will get worse. Between now and 2020, China's energy consumption will more than double, according to expert estimates. Ratcheting up energy efficiency, tapping renewable resources with hydro dams and wind turbines, and building nuclear plants can help, but--at least in the coming two decades--only marginally. Since China has very little in the way of oil and gas reserves, its future depends on coal. With 13 percent of the world's proven reserves, China has enough coal to sustain its economic growth for a century or more. The good news is that China's leaders saw the coal rush coming in the 1990s and began exploring a range of advanced technologies. Chief among them is coal gasification. "It's the key for clean coal in China," says chemical engineer Li Wenhua, who directed advanced coal development for Beijing's national high-tech R&D program (better known in China as the "863" program) from 2001 through 2005. Gasification transforms coal's complex mix of hydrocarbons into a hydrogen-rich gas known as synthesis gas, or "syngas." Power plants can burn syngas as cleanly as they can natural gas. In addition, with the right catalysts and under the right conditions, the basic chemical building blocks in syngas combine to form the hydrocarbon ingredients of gasoline and diesel fuel. As a result, coal gasification has the potential both to squelch power plants' emission of soot and smog and to decrease China's growing dependence on imported oil. It could even help control emissions of carbon dioxide, which is more easily captured from syngas plants than from conventional coal-fired plants. Despite China's early anticipation of the need for coal gasification, however, its implementation of the technology in power plants has lagged. The country's electricity producers lack the economic and political incentives to break from their traditional practices. |
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Measuring Asia's Pollution Exports
03/26/2008
Comments
Krakhan on 01/16/2007 at 3:25 PM
1
Has anyone thought to begin by creating c-o-2 "band-aids" on these plants?
By this I mean a "dry-ice" or CO2 extracter-plant next to the powerplant. The dryice can be buried in old mines or shipped to other factories for other uses.
On a similar basis, we have the technology to add particulate removal systems to the various other Chinese industries to remove the smoke and smog polluntants from the Atmosphere before they fully leave the smoke stacks.
Just a thought. Something along the idea of doing applying intermediate fixes while the final big fix is developed.
jack_ryan on 01/19/2007 at 7:17 PM
1
maybe somewhat off-topic, but just for clarification: the magnetically levitated train is the Transrapid, built by Thyssen-Krupp and Siemens.
While the basic technology was patented in 1933 by Herrmann Kemper, a small-scale version of the train had its maiden trip in 1971, at a time when Chinese were still waving Mao's red bible.
By continuous, cooperative research at Thyssen and Univ. Braunschweig it got todays looks and capabilities.
Have a look here:
http://www.transrapid.de
http://www.thyssenkrupp-transrapid.de/
http://www.juergen-koerner.de/tr_gesch.htm
http://www.iabg.de/transrapid/technik/index_de.php
or Goooooooogle for it.
The Chinese can be hailed for building the first commercially
used 30 km tracks from Pudong airport to downtown Shanghai, while a test track stands here in Lathen, Germany for some 25 years now.
Regards
tb5036t on 01/21/2007 at 2:49 AM
2
The reality is that today's modern PC plants with BACT are as clean as IGCC, their efficiency is 40-45% in line with IGCC (yes, IGCC is a lot less efficient than 50-60%) and they are a lot more CO2 capture ready than IGCC. Post combustion CO2 capture in a PC plant is a tail end process requiring no major modifications to the plant while pre combustion CO2 capture IGCC is a costly proposition requiring major changes to the plant including adding shift reactor and switching to hydrogen turbine that does not even exist. The reality is also that IGCC costs a lot more than 15-25% more than PC and, bringing it to par with PC in terms of reliability and availability, costs a lot more.
The simple but painful solution to global warming is a high tax on CO2 emissions from all sources. Higher cost will drive all of us to use energy more efficiently, to use less CO2 intensive energy sources and to develop and apply better CO2 capture technologies including to PC boilers.
suBWKEURRWE on 02/03/2007 at 2:07 PM
2
RayPhoenix on 03/14/2007 at 2:07 AM
1