Improvements in the Operation of SO₂ Scrubbers in China’s Coal Power Plants

Abstract

China has deployed the world's largest fleet of sulfur dioxide (SO(2)) scrubbers (flue gas desulfurization systems), and most of them now appear to be operating properly. Although many plant managers avoided using their SO(2) scrubbers in the past, recent evidence, based on a series of field interviews conducted by the author, suggests that managers of coal power plants now have incentives to operate their scrubbers properly. China's new policy incentives since 2007 appear well designed to overcome the hurdle of high operation and maintenance costs of SO(2) scrubbers. Furthermore, it is now far more likely that offenders will be caught and punished. Continuous emission monitoring systems have played a key role in this change of attitudes. Plant inspections have become much more common, facilitated by a significant increase in the number of inspectors and the fact that the 461,000-megawatt SO(2) scrubbers at the end of 2009 were located in only 503 coal power plants, making frequent inspections little constrained by the shortage of inspectors. Because SO(2) is the precursor of sulfate particles believed to cause significant cooling effects on climate, China's SO(2) mitigation may make it more urgent to control the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Greater focus needed on methane leakage from natural gas infrastructure

“…The production of sulfur aerosols as a result of coal combustion causes such negative impacts on human and ecosystem health that it is prudent to assume that policies will continue to be rapidly implemented in many, if not most, countries to reduce such emissions at a much faster pace than assumed by Wigley. Indeed, it has been reported that China has already installed SO 2 scrubbers on power plants accounting for over 70% of the nation's installed coal power capacity (14), such that SO 2 emissions from power plants in 2010 were 58% below 2004 levels (15). The SO 2 emissions factor from A B C Fig.…”

Global anthropogenic emissions of particulate matter including black carbon

“…Finally, the level of enforcement of existing laws, as well as the real-life performance of control technology, is seldom sufficiently well known and we tend to assume rather optimistically that both deliver and work as planned, which has been shown to be often false (e.g. Stoerk, 2016;Xu et al, 2009;Xu, 2011) as, more recently, in the so-called Dieselgate affair (e.g. Lange and Domke, 2015;US EPA, 2017).…”

Comparison of emissions inventories of anthropogenic air pollutants and greenhouse gases in China

“…The large difference in SO 2 emissions from the power sector between REAS and EDGAR is due to the difference in the assumed timing of the installation of FGD in coal-fired power plants. Newly designed policy incentives and an increase in policy inspection have led to an increase in the installation of FGD in China, and the percentage of plants with FGD increased from 10 to 71 % between 2006 and 2009 (Xu, 2011). The number of power plants is listed in Table 3.…”

“…China's uncertainty is much larger for CO and NO x , and 90 % of global CO 2 emissions uncertainty stems from China (Andres et al, 2014). Energy consumption has been steadily increasing in China but, at the same time, the implementation of emissions control measures, including the flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) in coal-fired power plants, has led to rapid changes in emission factors in recent decades (Xu, 2011;Zhang et al, 2012;Kurokawa et al, 2013). Several emissions inventories have been developed in the past, either specifically for China or for Asia (Streets and Waldhoff, 2000;Streets et al, 2003;Zhao et al, 2008;Klimont et al, 2009;Lu et al, 2010;European Commission Joint Research Centre, JRC, 2011;Lei et al, 2011;Lu et al, 2011;Smith et al, 2011;Zhao et al, 2012;Kurokawa et al, 2013;Klimont et al, 2013), but none have assessed or compared emissions from different source sectors at more disaggregated scales than the national level.…”