Handan Iron and Steel Group has chosen technology from GE to convert emissions from its 170 MW plant located in China into cleaner electricity. Gas waste resulting from the blast furnace and coke oven will be converted to electricity through the use of GE’s 9E Gas turbine.
With the help of the gas turbine, Handan will be able to reduce its cost of acquiring electricity from the grid and will enable the company to create lesser emissions. The gas turbine also offers greater efficiency and lesser emissions as compared to conventional boiler technologies that are used in coke oven gas and steel mills.
The gas turbine from GE uses lesser amount of water and also has the ability to recycle excess steam arising from the steel mills. GE will also provide two turbine generator packages which will consist of GE 9A5 generators with altered modifications in order to be compatible with the centrifugal fuel gas compressor also manufactured by GE. The COG and BFG fuel streams will be mixed with the help of GE Mark Vle controller, which is a combination of systems to measure fuel and valves. GE’s gas turbines have the capacity to burn various fuels like naphtha, natural gas, biofuels, BFG, residual oil, distillate oil and syngas. At present, over 50 9E units have been installed in China and this technology specifically is already in use in another steel plant in China. Installation work for Handan is expected to commence by 2012. The Chinese government has come out with stricter regulations regarding efficiency and emissions in steel mills and the technology at Handan will be directed towards this end.