Thermal power enterprises' denitrification projects have a large demand for automation.
After the introduction of China's "12th Five-Year" plan, the state has become more focused on energy saving and emissions reduction. Regulations concerning waste gas emissions from thermal power enterprises such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides will stimulate demand for automation products in the field of energy saving and emissions control. According to statistics, by 2011, nationwide there were 218 operational coal-fired denitrification units with a total installed capacity of 0.97 billion kilowatts. Compared to the thermal power installed capacity of 7.097 billion kilowatts in 2010, future new sulfur dioxide removal projects still have room for development, and new denitrification projects have broad prospects.
Application of automation in sulfur dioxide removal control and market space
According to investigations, currently most thermal power plant denitrification projects are still in the planning stage. The main reason is that denitrification costs are higher than sulfur dioxide removal. Statistics show that the cost for retrofitting existing coal-fired power generation units for denitrification and adding denitrification facilities to new units reaches over 300 billion yuan. In addition to one-time investment, the daily operating raw material costs for denitrification are also very high. For example, at a certain power plant, the cost of urea alone for a single denitrification project exceeded 10 million yuan in 2010.
Denitrification has high requirements for pressure transmitters/differential pressure transmitters. Due to the danger of ammonia gas, explosion-proof instruments are needed. The investment for a denitrification project for a 600,000-kilowatt unit is no less than 1 billion yuan, with the main investment used for unit retrofit projects, such as boiler retrofits. Approximately 1 million yuan is spent on automation, accounting for about 1%. Because there are currently no strict regulations for denitrification control, the requirement for automation is not high, and manual operation can be used in many places. However, as national standards become increasingly stringent, the level of automation for denitrification will improve in the future.
Automation products hold unlimited business opportunities in the denitrification control of existing coal-fired thermal power.
Currently, 81.4% of thermal power units have already been equipped with sulfur dioxide removal equipment, while only 13.7% of thermal power units have been equipped with denitrification equipment. There are still approximately 610 million kilowatts of installed capacity of coal-fired units that have not yet installed denitrification equipment. Taking a 600,000-kilowatt coal-fired unit as an example, the cost of a denitrification project is about 1 billion yuan, with automation product investment accounting for approximately 1%. The potential market for automation in denitrification control in the future is about 10 billion yuan.
In 2011, the Ministry of Environmental Protection formulated the "Emission Standard for Atmospheric Pollutants from Thermal Power Plants," requiring all existing and new thermal power units to have a nitrogen oxide emission upper limit value of 200 milligrams per cubic meter by 2014 and 2012 respectively. Over the next five years, environmental protection projects for thermal power plants, especially denitrification, will become a "hot cake." Whether it is through increasing points to incorporate sulfur dioxide removal and denitrification into the entire DCS control system, or "starting anew" by adding separate control systems for sulfur dioxide removal and denitrification, or combining them into one control system, for automation product suppliers, this will be a new track in the existing market.