China's Newest Power Plant Swaps Steam for Supercritical CO2
Imperial Oil Becomes First Major Alberta Energy Company to Oppose Separatism Uzbekistan is expanding nuclear-safety cooperation… Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… China just broke ground on a revolutionary new hybridized energy production and storage facility.
The power plant will store excess energy in the form of molten salt, and then produce electricity during peak demand times through a supercritical carbon dioxide system.
The goal of the project is to limit energy waste while also stabilizing the local power grid.
The project could also inform future next-gen energy and energy storage systems, including for application in the nuclear power sector and evenon the moon.
Construction of theRuitan demonstration projectbegan last week in Shandong province in eastern China.
The facility is expected to be up and running by next year, at which point it will be the first of its kind to operate on the planet.
The first phase of the project will involve a supercritical unit with a capacity of 50 megawatts, and a molten salt energy storage system with a 100 megawatt capacity.
The facility is being built on the site of an existing coal-fired plant, the Bajiao power station in Yantai.
The new system will capture surplus energy from the coal plant when demand is low and store it in the form of thermal energy within a molten salt reactor.
Then, at peak demand hours, that thermal energy will be used to power a supercritical unit that uses carbon dioxide to spin a turbine to create electricity, instead of using steam like a traditional power plant.
The carbon dioxide is held under very specific temperature and pressure ranges, at which point the molecules behave like both a liquid and a gas and can power a closed-loop system.
Supercritical carbon dioxide units offer several critical advantages.
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