Increase in total number of kilowatt-hour with low carbon emissions has become a national goal. There is an increase in electricity demand, to meet this growing demand the power companies are planning to build about 150 coal plants.
There is a serious threat of global warming if the plants are built because they will not be able to capture the thousands tons of carbon dioxide that burning coal will emit.
It is said that there are different techniques such as integrated gasification combined cycle or pulverized coal which will capture the global warming gases but the influential technical experts doubt such approaches.
A major new study by faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concludes in a draft version that it is not clear which technology will allow for the easiest carbon capture, because so much engineering work remains to be done.
The experts say that retrofitting either a gasification or pulverized coal will be impractical. It would be difficult to modify plants later and to find out ways to capture the greenhouse gases from the plants. The power companies need to learn to separate carbon from gasified coal plant but it is difficult from economical point.
New plants should be an improvement on what it is operating now because many plants now running require about 10,000 B.T.U.’s of heat to make a kilowatt-hour.
New designs are known as supercritical and they use hotter steam, with no moisture. The newest design are given the name ultra supercritical they push down the amount of heat needed to make a kilowatt-hour, engineers expect to reach the range of 7,500 B.T.U.
Only time will tell how truly efficient these coal plants will be..
Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES
