NTPC to minimize carbon footprint of 57+ GW units, says Bhattacharya
GE Power India Limited has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to help reduce carbon intensity from NTPC Ltd’s coal fired units, a first of a kind step for coal fleet decarbonization in India.
The GE-NTPC partnership aims to demonstrate technologies for firing higher percentage of Torrefied Biomass in NTPC’s coal fired unit, Methanol Firing and Ammonia Firing.
“This MOU is in line with our country’s efforts to adopt advanced powering technology to decarbonize power generation,” said Prashant Jain, MD GE Power India Limited and RGM GE Steam Power.
“This is a huge stride in India’s energy transition journey as the country looks ahead to achieve its net-zero targets.
“We are excited to partner with NTPC Limited on finding solutions to address carbon emissions, while ensuring efficient, reliable and affordable power generation,” Jain said on 22 Dec 2022.
“We are looking forward to working with GE Power India Limited as NTPC intends to minimize the carbon footprint of our 57+ GW coal-based units,” said Ujjwal Kanti Bhattacharya, Director Projects, NTPC Limited.
“We aim to decrease carbon footprint from our coal fired power plants by co-firing of alternative fuel such as carbon neutral fuel, Green Methanol and Green Ammonia.
“It will support our goal of reducing carbon emissions from our coal-based power generation, as part of NTPC’s The Brighter Plan 2032 that aims at setting new benchmarks in sustainability along the entire energy value chain in India.”
This first of a kind MOU aims at partnering on research, development and engineering of technologies that will enable NTPC to reduce the amount of coal fired in their units and gradually replace it by co-firing of ‘alternate fuel’ in boiler – both (i) carboneous (methanol, Carbon neutral fuel- agri-waste, biomass, etc) and (ii) non-carboneous (such as ammonia ).
This will make use of huge existing infrastructure and less new investment will not be required as compared to other decarbonisation options.
Further, as in India coal is the only option for base load so it will help to reduce carbon footprint from source of reliable power, for decades in future.
As a primary goal, the collaboration is to support NTPC in co-firing of biomass pellets beyond 20% and up to 100%, as well as enabling the co-firing of methanol. It will also explore the possibility of introducing ammonia as a co-firing fuel, and also develop, test and demonstrate technologies that allow a total co-firing with lower carbon fuels in coal fired power plants. fiinews.com
