Drax power plant
| Drax power plant | |||
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| location | |||
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| Coordinates | 53 ° 44 '9 " N , 0 ° 59' 47" W | ||
| country | England | ||
| Data | |||
| Type | Thermal power plant | ||
| Primary energy | coal | ||
| fuel | Hard coal , petroleum coke , biomass | ||
| power | 3,960 MW | ||
| owner | Drax Group | ||
| Project start | 1967 | ||
| Start of operations | six blocks from 1973 to 1986 | ||
The Drax power station is one with biomass and coal -fired power station in North Yorkshire in England near the village of Drax on the River Ouse . At present, a total of four units with a total output of 2.6 GW are operated with biomass and two units with a total output of 1.29 GW with coal.
history
Largest coal-fired power station in Great Britain
After the discovery of coal deposits near the town of Selby in 1967 - this was the last new development of a coal field in Great Britain and at the same time one of the largest underground mining projects in the world - the planning of the Drax power station began in 1967. The first two blocks went online in 1973, and the third block went into operation the following year. After several construction phases, the last of six power plant blocks of 660 MW each was completed in 1986.
Until the modernization, turbines were in use, which were put into service between 1973 and 1986 by C. A. Parsons and Company, a company that has belonged to Siemens since 1997. In 2007 Drax signed a contract with Siemens that included the modernization of all high and low pressure turbines and the provision of a replacement set.
Initially, coal from the nearby coal fields was primarily used for the power plant blocks that were completed first. In the period that followed until today, triggered by the British miners' strike , coal is also obtained from Australia , Colombia , Poland , Russia and South Africa . The transport from the ports is carried out by GB Railfreight .
The power plant has a total of twelve cooling towers , two per power plant block. With an installed capacity of 3,960 MW, it is the largest caloric power plant in Great Britain and generates seven percent of the electrical energy requirements. A maximum of 36,000 tons of hard coal could be burned per day , the consumption amounted to seven to eleven million tons of coal per year, making the Drax power station the largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in Great Britain in 2008 .
Conversion to a biomass power plant
Due to the lower technical effort, it was initially started in 2010 to add wood pellets as an addition to the coal, which is easily possible up to 10%. This co-firing enables access to substantial subsidies and a reduced offsetting of carbon dioxide emissions. From 2012 to 2016, three power plant blocks were converted to operate exclusively with biomass. The fourth block was converted to biomass firing in 2018.
The Drax power plant burns seven million tons of wood chips per year, mostly wood waste (as of 2019). Due to the small amount of wood available in the region, a large part of the biomass is imported from overseas. It consumed the majority of global wood pellet exports from the United States (60%) and Canada (54%) in 2014. As of 2016 [obsolete] , 12.5 TWh should be produced annually with wood pellets imported from Canada . The subsidy due was £ 45 per megawatt hour and was expected to bring Drax £ 550 million annually.
According to the company, a BECCS process will be used as part of a pilot project in 2019 to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from the biomass power plant. In this way, the power plant should be operated with negative emissions in the future . According to the company, this may make it the world's first power plant with negative emissions. However, because of the high energy expenditure for capturing CO 2 , the efficiency of the power plant would then decrease, i.e. significantly more fuel would be burned in order to generate the same amount of electrical energy. Furthermore, future follow-up costs or damage can arise when storing CO 2 .
Coal phase-out and new combined cycle units
Since 2017 there have been plans to shut down the last coal-fired units 5 and 6 by March 2021 and to replace them with natural gas- fired CCGT units . A total of two new blocks (blocks X and Y) with 1,800 MW each are to be built. In addition, an electric battery storage system with a capacity of 200 MW is to be integrated into the power plant complex. The Drax power plant would be the largest European gas-fired power plant after expansion and could in the future cause up to 75% of the CO 2 emissions of the electricity sector in the UK.
Coal train to the power plant
Cooling towers in the power plant
View of the block transformer in front of the machine house (left) and interior view of the side wall of the machine house (right)
.JPG)
See also
- List of power plants in the UK
- List of major carbon dioxide emitters
- List of fossil fuel power plants in the European Union with the highest carbon dioxide emissions
Individual evidence
- ↑ History of Drax Power Station ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , requested on September 5, 2011, engl.
- ^ Film "A partnership full of energy" about the modernization of UK Drax
- ↑ Drax Group Plc ( Memento of the original from August 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , requested on September 5, 2011, engl.
- ↑ Drax Coal-fired Power Station , accessed on September 5, 2011, engl.
- ^ A b c Wood The fuel of the future Environmental lunacy in Europe April 6, 2013 The Economist
- ↑ Biomass-fired Plant ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , requested on September 5, 2011, engl.
- ↑ a b British incinerator takes C02 out of the air for the first time. In: Spiegel online. February 8, 2019, accessed June 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Drax: Environmental Performance Report 2007 (PDF; 2.5 MB) In: Drax Group . 2007. Archived from the original on January 5, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 16, 2009.
- ↑ International Energy Outlook 2016: With Projections to 2040 , Government Publications Office, 2016, ISBN 978-0-16-093333-2 , p. 88 .
- ↑ Carbon dioxide now being captured in first of its kind BECCS pilot. In: www.drax.com. February 7, 2019, accessed June 16, 2019 .
- ^ Jillian Ambrose: Drax power plant to stop burning coal, with loss of 230 jobs. In: www.theguardian.com. February 27, 2020, accessed on May 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Drax Power Station CCGT. In: www.drax.com. Retrieved May 22, 2020 (English).
- ^ Damian Carrington: UK approval for biggest gas power station in Europe ruled legal. In: www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2020, accessed on May 22, 2020 .
