By Heinz Termuehlen and Werner Emsperger
This book presents the evolution toward advanced coal-fired powerplants. Advanced power plants with an efficiency level of 45% aretoday commercially available and even more efficient plants are intheir development phase.
Considering that presently many pulverized coal-fired power plantsoperate with an efficiency of about 32%, an improvement of morethan 40% specific coal consumption and CO2 discharge can beachieved.
Before trying to apply as a secondary measure the use of carbonsequestration, it seems that this 40% specific CO2 dischargereduction as a primary measure can much easier be achieved.
The effect of power generation on the environment can bedrastically improved by the use of flue gas cleanup systems inadvanced pulverized coal-fired power plants (SO2 emission reductionfrom 40 to 1.4 lb/MWh and NOx emission reduction from 7.5 to 0.64lb/MWh).
With an increased number of coal-fired plants, CO2 discharge andemissions can be reduced, even with an increase of electric powergeneration in the US by 38% over the next 20 years.
Even though the book concentrates on pulverized coal-fired powerplants, it also discusses and compares other options likefluidized-bed combustion and coal gasification.