China Huaneng Group, the nation's largest power producer, has completed construction of the Yuhuan thermal power plant, the largest ultra super-critical power plant in the world.

Located in Yuhuan in East China's Zhejiang Province, the power plant is the nation's first to use the most-advanced thermal power technology used in the world.

The plant includes four 1000-megawatt (MW) generating units, with the total investment of 15.6 billion yuan. The first phase of the plant, which includes two 1000-MW generating units, was finished in December 2006.

With ultra supercritical technology, a power-generating unit operates under a mix of temperatures and pressures above the critical point, at which the boundary of water's liquid state and a vapor state disappears. By eliminating the transition of water into steam, the power units markedly increase fuel efficiency.

According to Huaneng, after running for half a year the energy efficiency of the number one generating unit is 45.4 percent, compared with 33.5 percent of the conventional thermal power plants in China. The coal consumption of the unit is 283.2 g per kilowatt-hour (kwh), compared with 366 g per kwh.

Once the four units come into use, it will save 400,000 tons of coal equivalent compared with supercritical power plants, the CO2 emission will also be reduced by over 500,000 tons, and sulfur dioxide by over 6000 tons.

(China Daily November 27, 2007)