Turning Waste into Opportunity

While the region’s manufacturing output continues to grow, industry has to answer the question: How to balance the increasing growth against the challenge of greenhouse gas emissions reduction to 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050, as established by the EU Energy Roadmap?

One of the solutions put forward by GE Energy engineers is to better use waste gases and other low-quality fuel residues that are inherent in heavy industry. GE’s gas turbines can operate on this ‘waste,’ generating cheaper electricity whilst lowering emissions.

However, CEE industrial and oil & gas facilities don’t just benefit from reduced emissions. This technology also offers our customers a potential new revenue stream whereby they can sell some of the excess electricity back to their local grid.

Please click on the image for larger view (Source: GE Reports)

The Czech Republic’s Sokolovska Uhelna is a good demonstration of this. It extracts around ten million tons of lignite per year, of which six million is sold. The rest is used to produce 3.4 terawatt hours of electricity, thanks to two GE 9E Heavy Duty Gas Turbines operating in a combined cycle.

Another example is the Wuhan Iron & Steel Group Corp (WISCO) in China. Two massive GE 9E Heavy Duty Gas Turbines installed there burn coke oven and blast furnace waste gases, producing one billion kilowatt hours of electrical power, enough to make 20 million tons of steel and kick enough electricity back to the city of Wuhan to power 260,000 homes. The technology also scrubs two million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere and saves WISCO $32 million in annual operational expenses.

Turning waste into opportunity. GE is powering a cleaner, more productive world.