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Beijing Unveils Supercritical CO2 Turbine That Could Upend Power Tech
China has launched the world's first carbon dioxide–based power generator, using supercritical CO2 instead of steam to produce electricity with over 50% efficiency.
The system harnesses industrial waste heat—such as from steel plants—and needs no water or fuel, reducing maintenance and equipment complexity.
Compact and versatile, the technology could revolutionize carbon capture by using CO2 for profitable energy generation, potentially lowering emissions and storage costs.
China has launched a first-of-its-kind power generator that works with carbon dioxide instead of steam, like traditional generators in power plants. Perhaps more importantly, however, the new generator works with waste heat and boasts a much higher efficiency than existing ones at doing that. According to the company that designed it, the generator is the start of a new era, the South China Morning Post reported.
Normally, thermal power generators work in one of two ways, both relying on heat to turn a turbine. In coal power plants, the burning of coal heats up water until it vaporizes, the vapor then being directed to the turbines that generate electricity. In gas-fired power plants, the turbines are activated by the heat, generated from the compression of gas and its subsequent heating.
Unlike them, the SCMP reported, the new generator uses carbon dioxide in a supercritical state, meaning the compound is subjected to a certain pressure and a certain temperature, which makes it behave simultaneously like a gas and a liquid. The state is called supercritical, hence the whole generator is called a supercritical one. Conveniently, waste heat from sintering in steelmaking plants could reach as much as 700 degrees Celsius—so the inventors of the new generator connected it to one steel works, and to the grid. Even more conveniently, the supercritical state of CO2 does not, in fact, require this high of a temperature.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Sunday November 30, @03:08PM (3 children)
I'm one of the worst China fanboys here, but this article is stupid.
This is like saying wooden furniture might revolutionize tree growth, or ice makers could revolutionize clam water production. Using something has no effect on how efficiently it is produced.
(Score: 1, Touché) by whatnow on Sunday November 30, @03:51PM (2 children)
>> In gas-fired power plants, the turbines are activated by the heat, generated from the compression of gas and its subsequent heating.
Hmm, guess you learn something every day, I foolishly assumed that gas fired plants burn the gas to generate heat.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday December 01, @07:48PM (1 child)
I think I see where you guys are confused. Supercritical CO2 is a tolerable good working fluid, ideally it would neither flow into nor out of the power plant.
If you try to suck too much energy out of steam it turns to water and water in a turbine causes incredible wear and tear on the blades which are ideally very delicate and precise and randomly slapping into drops of condensed water is a problem. You could make an "ultra-efficient" steam turbine but the blades would be ruined in a week or so. Maybe a month. Either way they're too expensive to be abused that way. Its like the inverse of cavitation destroying a boat propeller. Supercritical fluids/gasses don't condense they just kinda get colder and denser so its "safe" to draw a heck of a lot of energy out with them.
I think people who haven't done a thermodynamic class think the output of the turbine in a steam plant is like ice cold beer too cold for UK peeps. Its not. Theoretically you could make a turbine that would cool down to blowing snow, but good luck making that light and efficient and cheap all at once. Also cooling it would be a PITA with a sane sized heat exchanger. Maybe on Neptune or something.
Believe it or not you can run supercritical steam its just like 250 Fing bars of pressure or something like that. CO2 is much chiller coolant to deal with, just keep it above 1000 psi or so (a mere 75 bar or so).
Its greenwashing not because it's sequestering CO2 (which it actually does, temporarily until it leaks out) but because the alternatives are a chore to deal with, and you can burn less fuel to extract more energy "green".
Ironically, methane from natgas would be a nice working fluid I bothered to look it up the crit pressure is only 46 bar and crit temp is -86 so no need to be weirdos about it even in the arctic. A giant ultra high pressure can of methane with a flame under it strikes me as a very bad idea. But it would be cool in the sense of I'd click to see that blow up on youtube LOL. Maybe supercritical argon would be a better idea, that needs 1000+ psi for practical use (you can't do stuff right at the triple point, has to be higher). But CO2 is cheap.
(Score: 2) by corey on Monday December 01, @09:07PM
Thanks for clarifying.
The article is an absolute mess. It makes no sense and chucks around buzzwords like CO2 capture. I thought initially it meant that the Chinese have figured how to extract CO2 from the air, compress it then burn it. But as you explain, it’s just in the closed loop between the compressor and turbine. It’s a minor improvement in efficiency, I suppose. Good. But geez, I can’t help but wonder if the article writer (hazard to day journalist in fear of smearing them such) ran it through an awful AI/LLM model.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Sunday November 30, @06:03PM (3 children)
"Beijing Unveils Supercritical CO2 Turbine That Could Upend Power Tech"
Upend power tech? How so? You couldn't possibly know by reading TFS or TFA.
As is so often the case here, the most basic of information that would support such a conclusion is completely missing. Not a peep on what it costs. An efficiency of 50% is given, but without a comparison to existing steam based systems that do the exact same thing, how are we to possibly have any idea if such a bold claim can be supported?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 30, @09:29PM
Careful now, don't underestimate China. There is an impulse to be scornful, belittling, and dismissive of rising powers, and the comments I've seen so far have that tone to them. Admittedly, the reporting is poor quality, making it impossible to figure how significant this particular advance is, or even if it is an advance. State propaganda requirements may have queered the article. On the other hand, translation from Chinese to English could have been bad, and mangled the meaning.
With the anti-educational and anti-intellectual MAGA movement in the US in power and doing all they can to shred US science and education, I seriously wonder if Chinese research is poised to surpass American research. I keep seeing stories of Chinese research. Just the other day was one about particle physics, in which a new detector in China is making the first measurements of its kind, helped by the particles emitted from two of their nuclear power plants. Public transportation in the US has been poor for decades. Not so in China. Could the first orbiters to Uranus and Neptune be Chinese, while MAGA dances on the graves of NASA and the Department of Education? On the stupid conspiracy theory front that scares MAGA is the the notion that China bioengineered COVID. Well, damn it, if MAGA is so afraid of that, why the heck don't they push for more biology and medical science in the US? Never mind, we know why. It's because MAGA is that stupid, and also disingenuous, quite willing to make noise about wacky conspiracies of all sorts as pretexts and justifications of their bigotry that is so central to their personalities and thinking, such as it is. The enemies and rivals of the US must be pleased no end with MAGA.
Could a Chinese flavor of Linux surpass both Windows and MacOS? A mainland Chinese takeover of Taiwan could really pinch Western science and tech, what with so many of our chips being made there. There's been some awareness of that, and maybe, enough has been done that if Taiwan is cut off the West will have alternatives.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday December 01, @03:27PM (1 child)
https://www.siemens-energy.com/us/en/home/press-releases/siemens-transports-its-most-powerful-and-efficient-gas-turbine.html [siemens-energy.com]
More than a decade ago Siemens was at a similar stage of product development for a 63% efficient combined cycle system and they shipped it half a decade ago.
Figure the Chinese are a decade or so behind the Germans. The Chinese can only espionage/steal trade secrets from the west at a certain rate and latency. They don't develop stuff on their own.
The Siemen's H-Class turbine systems are better overall although technically the highest installed operational figure I've seen was like 61%.
But yeah a good guesstimate for the first quarter century of the 2000s is you can get over 60% if you're willing to pay first worlders (not just Siemens). GE and Toshiba did a project in the late 2010s running like 64% if you round up IIRC. I remember that what with 64 being a power of 2 and that's the highest I've heard of.
Now supercritical CO2 might be cool if its low maintenance, cheap, reliable, etc. But the 50% achievement is pretty lame ... unless its cheap as Harbor Freight hardware.
(Score: 3, Informative) by corey on Monday December 01, @09:13PM
You’ve provided more insight and background here while volunteering your time on a random website, than the article writer did as their job, while being paid.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Sunday November 30, @08:39PM
POWER: 2019-04-01: What Are Supercritical CO2 Power Cycles? [powermag.com]
New Atlas: 2023-10-30: Supercritical CO2 pilot aims to make steam turbines obsolete [newatlas.com]