The largest coal-fired power plant in Europe has been converted to firewood
According to ERR, more than 100 major global financial institutions have evacuated the power coal sector so far, including 40% of the top 40 global banks and 20 major global insurance institutions. Global capital is fleeing the power coal industry. Countries have introduced policies to eliminate and reduce coal-fired power generation. How to deal with these eliminated power plants? Europe's largest coal-fired power plants offer a way to learn from. Britain's Drax coal-fired power plant plans to completely stop using coal for power generation by 2023, and will only consume natural gas and biofuels in the future.
Source: The BBC's official website reported China Coal Daily on February 23.
As Europe's largest coal-fired power plant, Britain's Drax Coal-fired Power Plant plans to completely stop using coal to generate electricity by 2023. They hope that the plant will consume only natural gas and biofuels in the future - crushed wood dust particles.
The European Union has set climate targets to reduce emissions in the coming decades, and many countries have plans to shut down coal-fired power plants. The British government plans to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2025.
Many countries are also working to achieve climate goals. Some countries, including the United States, are moving away from coal because other sources of energy are becoming cheaper and environmental regulations are cooling coal.
But this leaves a big question: how to deal with those old coal-fired power plants?
Over the past century, these coal-fired power plants have dominated the global energy market, and the high cost of connecting them to the grid means that it is not wise to simply dismantle them. Many people, including the management of the Drax plant, insist that there are other options.
The scale of the Drax power plant is obvious. Six cooling towers stand on either side of the huge building that houses boilers and turbines. White vapour drifted up into the sky. In the center of the workshop stands a chimney up to 259 meters. There is a big pile of coal behind the power plant.
The coal will be carried by conveyor belts to the power plant to crush and burn at high temperatures to generate electricity. This way of generating electricity is simple, but it is seriously polluted.
In April 2018, Britain did not use any coal for three days. Since the beginning of 2018, Britain has spent 1,000 hours without coal-fired power generation, surpassing the 2017 record. This trend means that coal-fired power generation is falling much faster than many people expected.
"In 2012, coal-fired power generation accounted for 45% of the energy structure." Matthew Gray, an analyst at Carbon Tracker, a think tank, said, "Today's share is very low."
However, from the perspective of power plant operators, it is not easy to eliminate coal. Andy Koss, chief executive of Drax Power Plant, said this was because biofuels were a more difficult substance to deal with than coal.
"It will clog up the equipment." Kos said.
He also remembers how early experiments with moving biofuels to coal conveyors led to particulate decomposition and dust generation. Unlike coal, biofuels must remain dry to avoid expanding into useless porridge mixtures. It can even ignite easily, because it oxidizes slowly, so it is necessary to check the temperature of the stacks of biofuels constantly.
The Drax plant spent 700 million pounds on energy conversion to ensure that new biofuels could be handled with care.
The plant also invested in four Dome-top buildings, each 50 metres high, for on-site storage of biofuels. Sixteen covered freight trains arrive here every day to transport more sawdust particles to ensure adequate fuel supply for power plants.
As far as biofuel processing capacity is concerned, Coase believes that it is "the largest in the world".
At present, the coal power generation capacity and biofuel power generation capacity of Drax Power Plant are 2 MW. It now has four biofuel generators to replace coal-fired ones. The remaining two generating units in the power plant will eventually be converted to natural gas.
Drax Power tries to build itself into a model of innovation, telling people how to change the face of an old coal-fired power plant. People have enough will and money to support this transition.
Delax Power Plant hopes to build large batteries in the plant area and use them when needed. There are other similar projects around the world.
Hydrostor, a Canadian company, has designed a plan to transform old coal-fired power plants into compressed air storage devices. When electricity is needed, air can be released to make the turbine of the power plant run again.
There are many other ideas to revamp the old coal-fired power plants. Drax Power Plant is not the only coal-to-biofuel project in the world, but it is the largest.
In Denmark, a coal-fired power plant in Copenhagen will be transformed into a 100% biofuel plant. The new incinerator nearby is large enough to build an artificial ski ramp on the roof. Google is transforming an old coal-fired power plant in Alabama into a data center.
It is clear that coal-fired power plants will survive the coal shutdown. However, if we want to make full use of these old power plants, we need wisdom and environmental awareness, and are prepared to pay for meaningful results in advance.
Coal has provided the world with electricity for hundreds of years. It is the symbol of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of simply sweeping it away, we should use the legacy of this once great industry to innovate.
