Coal and flue

Australian research organisation

and its Chinese partners have launched a pilot coal-fired power plant in

that captures 85 per cent of the carbon dioxide from its flue gases.

The group claims its post-combustion capture (PCC) pilot plant is the first of its kind in China. The technology is being tested for its effectiveness under Chinese conditions.

In PCC, flue gases leaving a power station are cooled then fed into a CO₂ absorber, where they pass through an absorbing solution that contains a chemical that captures CO₂.

The post-combustion research pilot plant at the Huaneng Beijing Co-Generation Power Plant is designed to capture 3,000 tonnes per annum of carbon dioxide.

CSIRO’s partners in the Beijing pilot project are China’s Huaneng Group and the Thermal Power Research Institute (TPRI).