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We are pleased to announce that JGC Corporation and General Electric have almost reached agreement to enter into a Global Marketing Agreement, to promote joint marketing of "GEFINERY," a JGC-developed combined-cycle power generating system making use of heavy oil.
This Agreement permits the two companies to share the global-scale market information that they own in their respective areas of client service and expertise, i.e., refineries and power generation, to serve as the basis for extensive joint sales activities.
"GEFINERY" has been developed aiming at an enhanced use of heavy oil. This originates from JGC's attention to the surplus heavy oils produced at refineries and the heavy crude oils now used for firing at steam power-generating stations. The idea is to extract from those heavy oils a light fraction (70-90%) and deep-demetallize it to produce a new fuel oil available for a high-temperature gas turbine.
This includes desulfurization of the fuel oil at the same time. GEFINERY is thus a totally new concept of gas-turbine-based power generation. So far, heavy oils have only been used for firing-based power generation, but the introduction of GEFINERY makes them available for 1,300-degree-C-class high-temperature gas-turbine-based combined-cycle power generation that allows high efficiency. By this, the usual power generating efficiency of around 40% , as in the case of crude-firing, can be improved to as high as 50%.
In recent years, gas turbine technologies have achieved increasingly high efficiencies and output, as enabled by higher and higher levels of combustion temperature. It has been expected that high-efficiency gas turbine combined-cycle power generation would become the main stream in thermal power-generation. However, available fuels have thus far been limited to clean fuels, such as natural gas, kerosene, and synthesis gases. On the other hand, heavy oils have restrictions in combustion temperature because of sodium, potassium, and vanadium contained therein, being unavailable for high-efficiency gas turbines higher than the 1,300-degree-C class. Clearing those obstacles with the abovementioned treatment, GEFINERY can be said an innovative technology.
A GEFINERY (see the configuration) is composed of a heavy oil refining system and combined-cycle power generation, featuring independent operations of the two sections, being separated with a new fuel oil intermediate tank, and easy response to the fluctuation of power demands.
Further, the refinery section can be designed to fit in a system size equivalent to 2,500 MW (70% utilization) per train, thereby enabling large reductions in refining/treatment and construction unit cost.
GEFINERY's other advantages over steam power generation include:
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- Power generating efficiency as high as 50% and low fuel cost.
- Low initial investment cost.
- No necessity for flue gas desulfurization facilities.
- Highly favorable environmental friendliness (a 20-30% CO2 curtailment plus low SOx emissions).
- An enhanced load-responsive property (using DSS & WSS).
The above culminates in advantages over steam power generation, in terms of power generating cost.
In Japan, there would be a growing demand for replacements of aged steam power-generating stations, for which reason the GEFINERY sales activities will be focused for the time being on such replacement projects to be planned by electric power companies, particularly because of the availability of an effective use of their existing infrastructures. GEFINERY, originally intended to make an enhanced use of residues from refineries, can be proposed as an extremely attractive power generating system for residue-abundant refiners in their plans to make an entry into the IPP services. Worldwide, there are many countries suffering a shortage of electric power. For use in those nations, especially those faced with surplus residues, GEFINERY is expected to see a strong demand as an ace among various power-generating systems.
With this GEFINERY as a core, JGC is going to promote further market exploration, with an eye to participation in the service of supplying new fuels as well as power-generating service in which more importance is being attached to economics because of the liberation of electric power.
Heavy oil is not the sole example in the fuel-related technologies in which JGC has directed continued development efforts in the power industry. Giving attention to little-utilized resources in the hydrocarbon area, JGC has endeavored to convert gas from small-scale fields and low-grade coals into energy with higher added values. For small-scale gas fields, JGC has already developed a technology for converting natural gas to dimethyl ether (DME), to make use of it as an LPG or LNG substitute, and, for low-grade coals, a process technology for slurrying them into a transferrable liquid fuel, to be utilized as a substitute power-generating fuel. GEFINERY will be another key technology to be added to those technical developments.
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