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Monday, January 01, 2007 China's Coal FutureContinued from page 5 By Peter Fairley
The problem is that IGCC plants still cost about 10 percent to 20 percent more per megawatt than pulverized-coal-fired power plants. (And that's without carbon dioxide capture.) China's power producers--much like their counterparts in the United States and Europe--are waiting for a financial or political reason to make the switch. In part, what's been missing is regulation that penalizes conventional coal plants. And China's environmental agencies lack the resources and power to make companies comply even with regulations already on the books. Top officials in Beijing admit that their edicts are widely ignored, as new power plants are erected without environmental assessments and, according to some sources, without required equipment for pollution control. Even advocates of IGCC technology expect that its widespread deployment in China will take at least another decade. Indeed, Du Minghua, a director for coal chemistry at the Chinese Coal Research Institute, predicts that it will be 2020 before application of IGCC technology begins in earnest. Waiting to Inhale Despite such pessimistic predictions, China's vast experience with advanced coal technologies and its proven ability to implement new technologies at a startling pace provide ample room for optimism. When you're racing into Shanghai at one-third the speed of sound on a train supported by an electromagnetic force field, it's hard to believe that a country capable of such an engineering feat will continue to ignore the deadly pollution engulfing its cities. To some analysts, the switch to clean-coal technology seems almost inevitable. "China has to rely on coal for future electricity and fuel needs, and it will eventually have to cap its CO2 emissions," says Guodong Sun, a technology policy expert at New York's Stony Brook University who has advised the Chinese government on energy policy. "Gasification is one of a very few technologies that can reconcile those conflicting scenarios at reasonable cost." Still, the timing of such a technology transition is very much in question. Will China really wait until 2020 to start the process of cleaning up its coal-fired power plants? The answer will depend, ultimately, on when China begins to feel that using coal gasification to generate electricity is as urgent as using it to produce transportation fuels--when the costs of air pollution become as worrisome as the costs of relying on foreign oil. Peter Fairley, a Technology Review contributing writer, traveled to China in October. |
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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