Advanced Power Generation Technologies
Authors: Minchener Andrew J 
Published: July 2017

The principal driving forces for development of advanced coal-fired power generation systems include:

The need to generate power at minimum economic cost. The need to improve thermal efficiency. The need to comply with current and expected environmental standards.

The means by which these objectives are being addressed vary, depending on the technology. Thus there has been the steady introduction of improved designs of pulverised fuel fired plant incorporating supercritical steam cycles, together with some form of flue gas desulphurisation, low NOx burners and, in some instances, further NOx control measures. While such systems are attractive they remain single cycles and so the scope for any further improvements is very limited. Consequently, in many cases, the approach to obtaining efficiency increases is to use combined gas turbine/steam turbine cycles and to minimise auxiliary power requirements. Capital costs are reduced by designing and sizing plant to enable a high degree of prefabrication before delivery and installation. There is scope to take advantage of further improvements in gas turbine technology and, in many cases, environmental controls are integral.

The introduction of advanced coal-fired power generation technologies to the market place is affected by a number of factors. They include:

Perceived technical and commercial risks balanced against the demonstrated and perceived advantages in terms of cost Environmental legislation and associated restrictions Perceived and actual relative fuel prices Government energy policies and, where appropriate, the availability of government funding to support demonstration projects.

The advanced coal-fired power generation technologies are being developed primarily in the industrialised world and initially are being deployed there. However, introduction on a very wide scale could follow in less developed countries, eastern Europe and CIS countries. This is because of the energy demand patterns (coal dominated) and high growth foreseen in the former and the major environmental problems in all of these parts of the world. For market entry to occur in these regions, the barriers of:

Mr. Andrew J Minchener is Environment and Industry Business Manager with special responsibility for technology services and development within CRE Group Ltd. This is a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Coal Corporation to be offered for sale as part of the coal industry privatisation. Mr. Minchener has some twenty years experience in coal utilisation reserach, development and demonstration in a number of market sectors. In particular, he has been involved in the development of advanced power generation process including PFBC and topping cycle processes. Mr. Minchener received BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Leeds and is a Chartered Engineer.

Technology transfer and Provision of external funding mechanisms and political risk cover

must be added to the list of market entry considerations given above.

This paper reviews advanced systems in terms of their development status, their commercial potential and considers requirements to assist introduction to the market place.