A wind farm near Heyuan City in Guangdong, China. In global energy rankings, one country stands out. Since , it has burnt more coal than all other countries combined. Rapid growth in its population and economy over decades, combined with a huge manufacturing industry and mass migration into street-lit, centrally heated cities, have turned China into a power-hungry nation.
And science and technology — in fields such as battery technologies, photovoltaics and energy management — are at the heart of those plans. Nature Spotlight on clean energy in China. The country has made massive investments in renewables, depositing 0. Air pollution became so bad in parts of China in that the media dubbed it an airpocalypse, with citizens enduring particulate levels up to 30 times those deemed safe by the World Health Organization.
And despite efforts to combat the issue, 48 Chinese cities still feature among the top most-polluted cities in the world. An employee works on a wind turbine at a construction plant in Nanjing, China. These levels of pollution have forced further action.
In December , the Chinese government introduced a development plan for renewable energy as a supplement to its overarching 13th five-year plan for social and economic development, spanning the period —20, which had been released earlier that year. Hong Li, who is involved in developing nationwide plans for new energy technologies, also points out that the levels of electricity generated by renewable sources — which vary with the amount of sun or wind — can be less consistent than those from fossil-fuelled power plants.
This includes a It runs through Gansu, all the way to Henan province in the centre of the country. Another way of ensuring that renewable power is available when needed is to increase the capacity for storing it.
This can be achieved using technologies such as batteries, pumped-storage hydroelectricity and thermal storage, says Yuki Yu, founder of the clean-energy consultancy Energy Iceberg in Hong Kong. A few of the issues being addressed are as follows:. GSEP aims to significantly cut global energy demand through continuous improvements in energy efficiency via public-private partnerships. In the short-term, sharing of best practices for generation and closing inefficient plants when feasible, and improving the remaining plants, can reduce coal consumption and avoid millions of tons of CO2 emissions annually.
However, over the longer-term, coal power generation must be based on the most efficient technologies available and use carbon capture and storage to achieve near-zero emissions. Our team can help you dight and create an advertising campaign, in print and digital, on this website and in print magazine.
We can also organize a real life or digital event for you and find thought leader speakers as well as industry leaders, who could be your potential partners, to join the event. We also run some awards programmes which give you an opportunity to be recognized for your achievements during the year and you can join this as a participant or a sponsor. Please enable your javascript!
Power Utility. How to improve the efficiency of existing coal-fired power plants By Scott M. Join Asian Power community. Your e-mail address. Yes, contact me. I want to download the media kit. In Focus More News. How can Indonesia decarbonise amidst expected energy consumption growth? Here are the main challenges that could hinder RE integration. Grid stability and commercial viability are key in the clean energy transition. A number of smaller programs at the U. These efforts are administered through the National Energy Technology Laboratory NETL and are focused on developing cost-effective coal use technologies and environmental controls that have the potential to yield near-zero emissions NETL, a.
Within the IEP program, NETL is supporting research on emissions control for mercury, advanced NO x , and particulate matter; utilization of coal by-products; and air and water quality. DOE provides up to 50 percent of the funding for each project, and the industrial partners involved contribute the remainder.
The programs have somewhat different goals:. The CCPI program was designed to support the demonstration of a range of promising technologies with potential to efficiently and reliably generate electric power with minimum adverse impact on the environment. This year program was established in to increase investments in clean coal technology.
The PPII program was a one-time program conducted in to implement commercial-scale demonstration of clean coal technologies at existing and new electric power generation facilities, with the objective of demonstrating higher efficiencies, lower emissions, improved economics, and enhanced system performance.
Improving by-product utilization was also one of the areas of focus in the PPII program. Research projects are under way in gasification, advanced combustion, turbine and heat engine technologies, and carbon sequestration:.
Activities include research on 1 a two-stage process for the removal of H 2 S, trace metals, HCl, and particulates; 2 membrane processes for control of H 2 S, mercury, and CO 2 ; and 3 sorbents for NH 3 control. FutureGen is a planned MW prototype plant that will use coal gasification and other advanced technologies to produce electricity, hydrogen, and other products, with near-zero emissions at high efficiency levels.
The facility will serve as a large-scale engineering laboratory for testing new clean power, CCS, and coal-to-hydrogen technologies. The plant is expected to begin operating in the time frame. The initial goal was to develop instrumentation and measurement protocols for direct sequestration in geological formations and for indirect sequestration in forests and soils. Other program goals are to begin demonstration of large-scale carbon storage options by , and to develop—to the point of commercial deployment—systems for advanced indirect sequestration of greenhouse gases, also by Biological and chemical processes that convert CO 2 to solid materials also are being investigated as means of sequestering CO 2 , and oceanic and terrestrial carbon sequestration has been studied NRC, b; DOE, c.
However, the principal focus of the DOE program is on geological sequestration, which is the only long-term storage option that has been demonstrated at a commercial scale—three large facilities are already in operation worldwide, and a number of smaller injection sites operate for research and development purposes IPCC, The goal is for these systems to have near-zero emissions and approach a no-net-cost increase for energy services DOE, a.
This program supports research in a variety of areas and strives to bridge the gap between basic research and the development of new systems capable of improving the supply and utilization of fossil energy resources. DOE also manages several programs that focus on technologies to facilitate the production of hydrogen from coal for use in fuel cells and other systems. Two possible coal-based hydrogen production scenarios are considered in the program: 1 the production of hydrogen alone or in combination with electricity, and 2 the production of high-hydrogen-content liquid fuels that can be.
Currently absent from the portfolio of DOE-sponsored projects are any full-scale demonstration projects of integrated CO 2 capture and storage at a modern coal-based power plant. The largest planned project is the MW FutureGen plant noted above, which is classified as a research project rather than a demonstration project. As of February , there were no plans for full-scale demonstrations of other CCS technologies, particularly post-combustion capture systems applicable to the current and future fleet of PC power plants in the United States.
Nor are there any planned U. While preliminary studies indicate that there are many geological formations in the United States that are potentially capable of storing large quantities of CO 2 DOE, , more detailed assessments are needed to identify suitable storage sites, quantify their capacities to store CO 2 , assess and quantify carbon dioxide migration and leakage rates at the storage sites, understand the environmental impacts of storage, and make the sites available see Box 6.
To a large degree, these important research areas can and are being addressed by participants in the current DOE Carbon Sequestration Program, including the seven regional partnerships in different parts of the country. Although primarily focused on regulation, the U. While it does not have a program specifically focused on coal utilization, a number of EPA activities are directly or indirectly related to coal use, for example:.
In March , American Electric Power AEP issued a press release to announce its intention to install post-combustion carbon capture technology on two coal-fired power plants. Geologic sequestration of CO 2 will require specific geologic strata in which the CO 2 can be placed and where it will remain permanently.
Sequestration resources have the ability to host CO 2 at some time in the future, whereas mineral and energy resources are currently hosts to their desired elements. The primary targets for geologic sequestration of CO 2 are petroleum reservoirs, saline reservoirs, and deep, unminable coal seams. The first two are widely distributed in sedimentary basins and have the potential to provide storage for large quantities of CO 2. Coal seams are more limited in their ability to sequester CO 2 on a worldwide basis, but individual coal seams may be an attractive storage target because in some settings coal may sequester a greater mass of CO 2 per unit volume than the other reservoirs, and there is also the potential of recovering methane from coal during the sequestration process.
Recently, researchers have found it useful to characterize the geologic sequestration process by the types of trapping mechanisms that can occur in the subsurface—structural and stratigraphic trapping, residual gas trapping, dissolution trapping, mineral trapping, hydrodynamic trapping, and coal adsorption Bradshaw et al. Current estimates for world storage capacity range over four orders of magnitude, indicating that these estimates are less than satisfactory.
Many of the estimates used overly simplistic methods and were based only on the total surface area of a sedimentary basin, using an assumed average thickness of reservoir rock and an average porosity Bradshaw et al.
The Particulate Matter PM Research Program is focused primarily on understanding how fine particles are emitted into the atmosphere, how they are formed in the atmosphere from gaseous pollutants, and how they are transported. Research is also under way to better understand the attributes of particles that cause adverse health effects, to identify those who may be most susceptible to these effects, and understand how people are exposed to PM air pollution.
The EPA has undertaken a range of research related to mercury emissions, including the development of protocols for verifying continuous air emission monitors used to measure total and chemically speciated mercury in source emissions, and the compilation of speciated elemental, oxidized, and particulate mercury emissions data from coal-fired utility units to estimate mercury emissions nationwide.
Reliable estimates of CO 2 storage capacity are required by national, regional, and local governments, as well as by the emerging sequestration industry. Estimation of CO 2 storage capacity requires a detailed knowledge of the characteristics of the potential reservoir Bradshaw et al. Bradshaw et al. Identification of clear and accepted definitions that are meaningful across a range of geoscience disciplines, including geology, reservoir engineering, and hydrology. Establishment of consistent and accepted methodologies and guidelines for capacity estimation.
Establishment and documentation of appropriate constraints for assessments, especially for the technical geological and reservoir engineering data.
Establishing reporting practices for storage capacities that are on a par with modern practices in the other resource industries. This program included support for a high-level overview of potential geologic sequestration sites in the United States and Canada DOE, c.
A large number of state agencies, universities, and private companies are involved in the program through seven regional partnerships as well through a variety of other projects funded by the program. EPA also has regulatory responsibility for waste disposal that involves underground injection of hazardous and nonhazardous wastes.
Injection of CO 2 for geological sequestration currently falls within the purview of the EPA Underground Injection Control UIC program, whose primary purpose is the protection of drinking water supplies. CO 2 injection for enhanced oil recovery EOR is currently permitted under the UIC, and EPA has recently formulated draft guidance to permit pilot geological sequestration projects involving injections into deep saline formations.
The introduction of copper salts resulted in improved reactivity and higher burn rate of the fuel samples. It is also worth mentioning that the content of unburnt carbon in the ash residue of the modified samples was significantly lower than that in the reference samples. The introduction of copper nitrates, acetates and sulfates to the fuel samples was carried out by the incipient wetness procedure.
The mechanism of combustion activation relies on the intensification of the production of gas-phase combustion products at the early stage of volatiles' release and the generation of micro-explosions to prevent formation of slag layers that would otherwise block oxygen from the fuel. When using oxide-based additives, dynamic contact between the fuel and the additive has to be ensured, the researchers noted. The use of salts as a catalyzing agent doesn't require that type of contact, which makes this new method of coal modifying potentially applicable in the energy industry.
The researchers believe that the use of salt-based additives for increasing the efficiency of coal-burning could help improve fuel efficiency in energy production, minimize energy use for preheating power generating equipment and reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. Explore further. More from Earth Sciences. Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page.
For general inquiries, please use our contact form. For general feedback, use the public comments section below please adhere to guidelines.
Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages. Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.
You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties. More information Privacy policy.
0コメント