COTES Engineering presents the results of 27-year work on the energetics market and its plans to improve the ecological situation and efficiency of CHP plants in Siberia

On Tuesday, the 15th of October, COTES Engineering held a briefing with journalists in the Interfax-Siberia’s office, to present its results and plans for the work, to discuss the situation in coal energy generation in Siberia and the ecological issues, which are of great current interest.

Adherence to key area: power engineering

“On the 13th of October the COTES brand celebrated 27 years, — told COTES Engineering LLC’s CEO Dmitry Serant. — By making a summary, one could remember many challenges and milestone events. And the most important, we continued the history of core activities in the sphere of power engineering, the independence and professionalism. Today’s COTES is an independent company with experienced engineers. We continue developing designs of retrofit and green-field construction of power facilities both in Russia and abroad. We offer optimum solutions based on our own experience, research and development works, the best of the currently available state-of-the-art technologies of Russia and global practice”.

For the record, the brand first appeared in 1992 in Podolsk, where AOZT COTES adjustment company was incorporated by Feliks Serant. 90 % of the company’s projects during first several years were the adjustment works in the countries of Eastern Europe. For today, COTES Engineering again works actively on the market of Eastern Europe, however, as the company of integrated engineering, that carries out works on retrofitting main power equipment (first of all the boilers). Main goal, which is set by foreign owners of the most of facilities in Eastern Europe, is improvement of efficiency, overcoming the capacity increase limitations and making the ecological component better.

“The European requirements are more severe, than Russian ones, this is why solutions we offer for implementation are selected and analyzed thoroughly, — said Mr. D. Serant. — We hope to develop the like designs in Russia soon. We have already got necessary experience and competence”.

Priority: improvement of efficiency and environmental friendliness

Russia occupies the world’s 13rd place in the number of coal-fired TPPs (of 56 GW of global coal-fired power generation). And Siberian coal-fired facilities are 45 % of Russia’s. That is to say, COTES Engineering’s experience in retrofitting the coal-fired CHP plants is useful first of all here in home region.

Compared to other power plant types, coal-fired energetics of Russia is of higher concern in terms of environment, and less effective than, for instance, steam-gas generation. Efficiency of Russian coal-fired power plants is quite low: not more than 36 %. For reference, this value for modern coal-fired power plants in the world is 43-45 %, and up to 50 % in China. Whilst the cost of construction of Russian power plants is 1.5 times higher than in Europe and generally in the world, Russia has too low use of new and globally recognized technologies of reducing the emissions and improving the efficiency of heat and electric energy generation.

The values of Russian and global emissions differ dramatically. The China’s best values of ash emissions are 2 mg/nm³, Europe’s are 5-10 mg/nm3, and new Russia’s plants (built after 2001) — 200-250 mg/nm³, and for old plants (commissioned before 2001) — it may reach 500-900 mg/nm³. The same situation is observed for nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide emissions: up to 50 mg/nm³ in Europe, 500-700 mg/nm³in Russia. However, the trend is optimistic: green-field construction designs rely upon more severe requirements. Good case — Artemovskaya CHP plant on the Far East, where requirements in limit emissions of NO_x are 300 mg/nm³.

“As we can see the situation changes — satisfyingly noted Mr. D. Serant. — Improved dependability, environmental friendliness and efficiency of energetics, these are key challenges, which the owners of power plants and energetic assets of industrial facilities are ready to invest in. We get feedback and discuss it with many customers. Good case of the work already done is the justification of investments into retrofitting CHP plant of AO OTEK Seversk Branch. We have worked on all practicable options, configurations, values and indicators — and hope to take part in implementing one of the options soon”.

Diversification into new markets: The physics of process is everywhere the same

By adapting for the market specifics, COTES is diversifying its business, and exploring the adjacent industries. The industrial facilities’ energetics market analysis has shown, that in many cases low capital investments and substitution of old-fashioned technologies and equipment with modern ones could result in a drastically improved efficiency and environmental friendliness of the energetic assets.

COTES Engineering has previously worked with the customers from oil refining, metallurgical, pulp and paper, and coal washing industries. The most of projects refer to pulp and paper mills. One of the first projects was development of the design and detailed design documentation for re-equipment of stage No.3 RB-1400 recovery boiler of Ust-Ilimsk forest complex (2017-2018). Installation of modern Finnish Valmet boiler allowed increase of the production capacities and improvement of the plant’s operation efficiency.

 “Whilst the physics of process is everywhere the same, there are specifics, — said COTES Engineering’s Chief Engineer Vitaly Kuchanov. — For example, in recovery boiler, general basic processes are the same as for a power boiler, but one should also consider the chemistry aspects. The work with forest complexes has demonstrated a good skill of our professionals to deal with it. Today we continue improving our competences in this sphere, passing dedicated trainings and performing the range of works for the pulp and paper facilities”.

“We can declare this clearly, that any industrial facility in Russia, that has not been retrofitted for the last 10-15 years, has a potential for improving the efficiency and ecological situation in terms of emissions, — added Dmitry Serant“.

Ash dumps issue can be resolved through a properly designed dry ash handling system

Today, over 28,000 hectares of land in Russia are occupied by existing ash dumps. All of them were built in distant areas from the city, however, some of them (because of urban development) appear to be within the residential areas, including in Novosibirsk.

The most simple method to stop the growth of ash dumps is to sale materials made of bottom ash and slag. All over the world these are used for manufacturing concrete, cement, building the roads, making cementing mixtures, as well as for landscape management (removal of gulleys, area planning). Today about 10 % of the ash slags yearly output is sold in Russia, whereas in developed countries this value reaches 50 to 100 %.

“Over 5 years COTES Engineering along with Fenix Consortium offers implementation of 100% bottom ash disposal system in various plants — told Mr. D. Serant. — We even can give the guarantee of complete ash sale, provided that the project is implemented in line with our requirements. The requirements are quite simple: less than 5% of underburning, ash selection by grain size and permanent availability of bottom ash materials for uninterrupted supplies with stable quality. It is impossible to reach and maintain these values with conventional hydraulic ash handling system and ash deposition in existing ash dumps. The unique solution is to implement dry ash handling systems. The cost of implementation may vary, for a large plant it is about 1.5 to 2 billion roubles at the average. For a green-field construction dry ash handling system results even cheaper than conventional one. Moreover, by installing new electrostatic precipitators, one may achieve the ash emission of 50 mg/nm3 and the investments payback for a few years, including through selling the bottom ash materials. For energetics it is a small period”, — finalized Mr. Serant.

Real-time emissions monitoring

The ecological issues are now of greater concern of authorities in any level. The ministry of nature approved the list of 300 enterprises of the highest category of hazard in terms of emissions of pollutants. They are obliged to obtain the complex ecological permit by the 1st of January of 2022, and then, within 4 years, to implement the system of automatic hazardous pollutants emission monitoring system. The system shall analyze real-time key indicators of emissions and transfer the data to the state register of facilities causing a negative environmental impact.

“As engineering company, we are ready now for implementation of these systems not only in Siberian region, but anywhere in Russia, — said OOO COTES Engineering Deputy CEO Anton Serant — We have already completed pilot designs for several power systems and industrial facilities. We are developing now the options for installation of monitoring systems for the Far East Power Generation Company”.