India’s energy sector is today witnessing massive transformation in expanding its clean energy base. While India aims to achieve 500 GW worth of renewable energy – coal will continue to support our ever-growing grid and its absolute usage may, in fact, increase.

The government too is cognizant of this dependence and is taking due policies in mandating powerplants to cut their emissions with the deployment of cutting-edge control technologies. On these lines, the government’s initiative to make it mandatory for coal-based power plants to comply with emission norms and support energy transition by adopting Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) support in improving the air quality and take charge if pollution control for the vicinity. Over the next three years, around 210 GW of coal-powered thermal plants are required to meet emission norms as originally proposed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) in 2015. India’s future, thus, will hinge on sustainable, affordable and reliable energy.

A case for making coal plants cleaner

Despite the renewable push, 70% of India’s energy demands continue to be met by traditional coal-fired plants – and is expected to power 50% of our energy requirements even in 2050. About 54% of India’s installed power generation capacity is still fuelled by coal and coal-fired thermal power, which ranks among the highest polluting industries in India. Given this heavy dependence on eco-unfriendly coal-fired power plants and India’s simultaneous targets to reduce PM, SO_X, and NO_X emissions by 2022 there is a dire need to improve the efficiency of existing power plants.

Air pollution, which involves presence of substances like particulate matter (PM), sulphur oxide (Sox) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, is majorly caused by these pollutants emitted from various industries and thermal power plants.

GE Power India Ltd. (GEPIL) (a publicly held independent listed entity under GE Steam Power), one of the leading players in the Air Quality Control Systems (AQCS) and services space, has been working extensively on developing AQCS related technology that can combat emissions and significantly reduce negative environmental fallouts from traditional powerplants. GEPIL’s experience working with the Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Super Thermal Power Station, 1X500MW is a shining example of how traditional power plants can be made cleaner.

The project is one of the biggest coal-based power plants of NTPC Limited, located in Unchahar, Raebareli District, Uttar Pradesh.

In associating with the Unchahar power plant, GE’s technology has worked towards ensuring reduced SOx emission. It is the first and fastest C276 clad absorber across all FGD projects in India.   GE’s Wet Flue Gas Desulfurization (WFGD) system has shown high SO₂ removal rate, using the open spray tower technology. Additionally, the recovered by-product “Gypsum” shall be made usable as an additive in cement or used as a fertilizer/soil pH improvement. The Unchahar milestone is a big achievement both for NTPC as well as GEPIL. The power plant now has a fully operational WFGD system plant for its Unit VI and shall ensure emission control from the unit to reduce ground level pollution for the for the area and power more than a million Indian homes.

Technology first

GEPIL’s WFGD solutions are helping lower SO₂ emissions with efficiencies of greater than 98%. The Semi Dry NID Technology of GE is a modular, low footprint, low-cost solution especially for units of smaller size (viz. CPP) and units with space constraints and lower residual plant life. In the past, GEPIL has also pioneered India’s first full flow WFGD EPC project on limestone in India with the NTPC Vindhyachal with 500 MW capacity project.

GEPIL is the only player with end-to-end local competence to execute all emission control projects. This equips GEPIL with unparallelled expertise in contributing to India’s journey for clean power. The company has been instrumental in supporting customers in their efforts to meet India’s stringent emission norms with an annual reduction of 1.1 million tonnes of SO₂ and 160 thousand tonnes of NOx from the existing operational power plants where GEPIL is executing NOx, SOx reduction projects.

India’s journey to a sustainable tomorrow shall unfold together with power from coal-fired plants within the country aims to meet the development targets and achieve a USD 5 trillion economy.