Carbon dioxide captured is relayed to a transporting vehicle which discharges white fog during pressure relieving process at the Huaneng Beijing thermal power plant in Beijing on Wednesday, July 16, 2008. [Photo: Xinhua]

A worker operates on a desulfurization facility at the Huaneng Beijing thermal power plant in Beijing on Wednesday, July 16, 2008. [Photo: Xinhua]

China Huaneng Group, the country's largest power producer, put into operation on Wednesday in Beijing a post-combustion carbon capture facility at a thermal power plant that has successfully captured carbon with a purity of 99.99 percent. The pilot project is capable of recovering more than 85 percent of carbon dioxide from flue gases of the power plant and can thus trap 3,000 tons of the gas annually from emissions that would otherwise contribute to global warming, Xinhua news agency reported.

The project was designed and developed by Xi'an Thermal Power Research Institute, with all of its equipment domestically made. It operates by using chemical solution to absorb and separate carbon dioxide from fuel gases in high temperature. The solution can be recycled for reuse.

The company in 2007 signed an agreement with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia's national science agency, to develop clean-coal power generation and carbon capturing and storage technologies.

The collaboration includes capturing power plants' flue gases, coal gasification, coal gas purification and other generation technologies.

The Huaneng Beijing thermal power plant has already installed desulfurization and denitrification facilities. It also uses recycled urban wastewater in production.

Huaneng previously launched in Tianjin the GreenGen project, the first near-zero-emission integrated gasification combined cycle power plant in China with a capacity of 250 mW, China Daily reported. US coal company Peabody became an equity partner in the project.

(CRI July 17, 2008)