NEWS RELEASE                                                                                                    MAY 2015

Thousands of Air Pollution Control Projects at Chinese Coal-fired Power Plants

China is no longer building one new 1000 MW coal-fired power plant per week.  The program has slowed to only about 500 MW per week.  However, tighter regulations are forcing upgrades at most power plants.  Datang just announced that it will upgrade ten plants this year.

New national and local regulations are approaching and surpassing the stringency of regulations in the most advanced countries.  The result is that there are thousands of individual projects underway. These projects are tracked in Chinese Utility Plans published by the McIlvaine Company.

Many of the projects involve reduction in particulate emissions. Ninety-five percent of the coal-fired boilers in China utilize dry electrostatic precipitators for capture of fine dust.  Most will not meet the new standards. Options include:

  • Upgrade the existing precipitator with more efficient internals.
  • Expand the size of the existing precipitator.
  • Replace the internals with filter bags.
  • Add a wet electrostatic precipitator.

Where a plant also has to remove more NOx and SO2, there are additional options:

  • Combine a dry scrubber with a fabric filter to capture both dust and acid gases.
  • Install ceramic catalytic filters with dry sorbent injection.

Plants in certain cities and provinces have to meet stringent limits on dust, SO2, NOx and mercury.  Wet precipitators have been selected by several plants in these zones. Several are combining activated carbon injection and dry scrubbing.

More of the engineering and process design is being undertaken by Chinese companies.  Only two large system suppliers are operating from foreign locations. Some international suppliers have very active Chinese subsidiaries which function as Chinese companies and even export air pollution control equipment to other countries in Asia.

Some home grown Chinese companies have developed enough expertise to export to other countries. The most notable activity has been the sale of hybrid precipitators to India.  These units have precipitator fields and then filter bags.  China has also developed the largest catalyst manufacturing capacity of any country.

For more information on 42EIC Chinese Utility Plans, click on: http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/index.php/databases/2-uncategorised/88-42eic