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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: 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.