HNC students at Guodian power plant
Photo credit: Matt Hess

China’s economy is largely supported by coal-fired electricity, and power plants in this country have a huge impact on the local, national and international environment. All of the ERE courses I teach here at HNC – addressing air pollution control, global energy fundamentals, global environmental challenges, etc. – are very much affected by the design and operations of these facilities, and it is therefore extremely important that students have a solid understanding of what goes on in such a plant.

I was therefore extremely pleased when Prof. Zhou Yuanchun – shown in the Changzhou WWT write-up four postings below – arranged for our ERE students (& faculty) to visit a major coal-fired power plant in that same city. China Guodian Corp. is one of the five big power generating companies in China, and their plant in Changzhou is quite large – two supercritical 630 MW units, with two more (ultra-supercritical) units on the drawing board, and scheduled to come on-line in 2018.

Control Room visit
Photo credit: Brandon Yeh

And what an amazing tour they provided! Six Guodian engineers spent a considerable amount of time with us beforehand, going over their operations in detail, addressing all questions, and being very open & informative. They then gave us a really fantastic tour of their facility…. & went out of their way to point out specific pollution control units & operations. The facility itself had exactly the kinds of technologies we had covered in class — “scrubbers” (i.e., flue gas desulfurization [FGD] units); selective catalytic reduction (SCR) de-NOx systems; electrostatic precipitators for particulate control, etc., etc. — and on really sizable units, so students could get a good impression about scale as well.

Changzhou plant ‘scrubbers’

These larger, cleaner coal-fired facilities are replacing smaller, inefficient, dirtier units…. and that is obviously a good thing to see. The next transition — away from coal altogether — will probably not be as easy, but ultimately will be necessary as well.