On December 8, the first large-scale (5MW) carbon dioxide (CO₂) cycle generator developed and built by Xi'an Thermal Power Research Institute (TPRI) of China Huaneng Group completed 72 hours of trial operationand was officially put into operation at the Xi'an Huaneng Test Base.
During its 72-hour full-load operation testing, the maximum temperature achieved 600℃with the maximum pressure of 20MPa, and the generating power is 5MW. The system indicators fully meet the design requirements, achieving high standards of safe and stable operation.
Mr. Lixiin Su, President of TPRI said, recycling CO₂to drive generators for power generation has three advantages compared with traditional steam power generation: First, it is small in size, under the same installed capacity of power generation, the CO₂generatorhas only 1/25 of the steam generator; and the second is the high efficiency, about 3~5 percentage points higher than that of the steam generatorat 600℃; the third is that the pollution is small, and the coal-fired power plant using CO₂generator can reduce the carbon emission intensity of unit power generation by 10%.
Dr. Yang Yongping, President North China Electric Power University expressed: Carbon dioxide cycle power generation is the frontier area in the world, which is flexible, fast to start and stop with fast load, and is very for advantageous to solve the curtailment of renewable energy generation.
According to experts, the future CO₂ cycle generation technology will be further applied to flexible coalpower plant, high-efficiency CSP, nuclear power, energy storage and other fields to provide technical support for promoting the construction of a new power system with new energy as the main body.
In the field of CSP, supercritical CO₂solar thermal power generation technology is considered to be the next generation of solar thermal power generation technology, which has a significant effect on reducing the cost of solar thermal power generation and has received wide attention.18 partners led by Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IEECAS) are conducting the integrated theory and methods of concentrating / thermal collecting / storage / power generation within the fundamental R&D project of supercritical CO₂ CSP generation funded by Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).
