A Chinese steel mill will use waste gas from its blast furnace and coke oven to generate power using a GE 9E gas turbine and a new fuel engineering process, GE announced.
GE technology was selected for a new 170-megawatt power plant at Handan Iron & Steel Group mill in Handan City, China, and the process will use emissions from iron and steel production to generate cleaner electricity, reducing the mill's use of fossil fuels and its CO2 emissions. The project will begin in 2012.
GE said that its 9E gas turbine already burns a wide range of fuels, including natural gas, residual oil, BFG, syngas and biofuels; however, the waste gas that will be used at Handan Steel had been considered too low quality for high-efficiency power generation.
The process will include two-stage centrifugal compressors manufactured by GE, and the blending of the blast furnace gas (BFG) and the coke oven gas (COG) fuel streams will use a GE Mark VIe controller and fuel measurement platform.
The technology behind the Handan plant already has been proven at a steel mill in Wuhan, China, GE said, and the company sees the potential of the re-engineered fuel to impact energy use in the steel industry.
Recent Chinese government legislation is tightening the regulations on steel mill efficiency and industrial activities, with specific goals for the next five years, GE said in its statement. As well, Reuters reported in October that the Chinese National Energy Administration is expected to announce regional energy consumption quotas.
Handan Iron & Steel has an annual steel-production capacity of 10 million tons, and employs about 24,000.
