02.01.2012 | By Sonal Patel
Last December, as Spain’s national carbon capture and storage (CCS) research laboratory Fundación Ciudad de la Energía (CIUDEN) began a much-watched testing phase of oxycombustion in its 30-MWth circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boiler in Cubillos del Sil, Vattenfall scrapped the €1.5 billion ($2 billion) Jänschwalde CCS demonstration project that it had planned to build and begin operating by 2015 in the German federal state of Brandenburg....
02.01.2012 | By John J. Iovino and Richard LaFlesh, Alstom Power
In January 2012 a new mercury control system at the Colstrip power plant in Montana reached its first major milestone: two years of operation with mercury emissions below the state regulatory limit. The plant uses Alstom’s unique Mer-Cure technology to capture up to 90% of the mercury leaving the stack. ...
01.01.2012 | POWER editorial staff
The POWER editorial staff's picks for the most significant stories of 2011....
01.01.2012 | Sonal Patel
After years of political wrangling, coal-rich Australia in November passed legislation that will require the nation’s top 500 polluters, starting in July 2012, to pay a tax at a fixed price of A$23 (US$23.50) per ton...
01.01.2012 | Sonal Patel
After more than a decade debating whether to pass a carbon-limiting law, Australia’s Senate in November voted in a landmark bill that will impose a price on carbon emissions. The country, which accounts for just 1.5% of global carbon emissions, but...
01.01.2012 | By Ravi Jethra and Keith Riley
Measuring the level of dust and fly ash collected in electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) is a very difficult technical problem. At one utility, level switches were so unreliable that operators could not trust their readings because failures were so frequent. When a switch did fail, the precipitator would often clog up, costing the utility up to $100,000 in downtime and repair costs....
01.01.2012 | By Kennedy Maize, Charles Butcher, and Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
U.S. optimism has been restored by reports of abundant, reasonably priced natural gas to fuel most new generation; however, huge gaps in the fuel delivery system (thousands of miles of pipelines are needed) will soon challenge gas plant development. Meanwhile, the cloud of sovereign debt hangs over all major capital projects in Europe, where the UK moves ahead with new nuclear projects while many of its neighbors shut the door on nuclear and struggle to finance their commitment to renewables....
01.01.2012 | By Arshad Mansoor, Electric Power Research Institute
The technologies used to generate and distribute electricity will be radically transformed during the coming decade. Amid that change, the power industry must continue to meet customer reliability, safety, and cost-of-service expectations. Achieving the right balance among these often-conflicting goals is the primary focus of every utility. The Electric Power Research Institute is helping utilities achieve that balance with R&D programs for many new and emerging technologies....
01.01.2012 | By Zeng Ming, Xue Song, Zhu Xiaoli, and Ma Mingjuan, North China Electric Power University
The Five-Year Plan is the expression of the centralized planning goals for China’s economy. The 12th Five-Year Plan, approved by the Chinese Government on March 14, 2011, established many social and economic goals, including significant expansion of the country’s power generation industry in many new directions....
12.27.2011 | By Sonal Patel
A supplement to “The Big Picture: Gas Taxes” in our January 2012 issue....
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