How green is your plant? [power stations]

For many years the principal concern of the power generation business has been to provide electricity to consumers with maximum reliability and with considerable concern for efficiency. Move recently two very significant new drivers have appeared in the market place. Environmental concerns associated both with acid rain and greenhouse gases have become more and more pressing, and at the same time deregulation has introduced a new agenda for the power generation business. Forces of environmental and deregulatory pressures do not always pull in the same direction, and this paper looks at the technical developments that have taken place and that are envisaged in the near future to address these matters. The paper discusses coal-fired plants, gas turbines, coal gasification, and carbon dioxide emissions.