OREANDA-NEWS. On June 25 Korea Midland Power (KOMIPO) (President & CEO CHOI, Pyeong-Rak) and Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction (Chairman & CEO Geewon Park) signed an agreement to jointly conduct a state-funded project to develop demonstration technology to enhance the efficiency of the main equipment and improve the performance of 500 MW standard thermal power plants.

The state-funded project entails developing advanced prototypes of the steam turbine and boiler, featuring enhanced power efficiency of 3 percent (i.e. by increasing the temperature of steam from 538 Celsius to 593 Celsius) and their installation at the thermal power plant. If plant efficiency is increased by 3 percent, it will cut the fuel cost by 20 billion won per unit per year, as well as reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 120,000 tons per year, and thus have a significant effect on improving the environment.

KOMIPO and Doosan plan to create prototypes for the main equipment and various auxiliary equipment, by the end of 2018. After conducting a demonstration, the existing equipment of Boryeong Thermal Power Plant Unit 3 will be replaced with the upgraded ones.

Korea has twenty 500MW standard thermal power plants as of now, and if the project proves to be successful, more plant performance improvement projects are expected to follow.

Choi, Pyeong-Rak, President & CEO of KOMIPO, said, “This project will serve as a watershed that will help upgrade technology to improve the plant performances,” adding, “Upon successfully conducting the state-funded project, we aim to open a beachhead for Korean companies’ advance into overseas, achieve shared growth with domestic small and medium-sized enterprises, and create more jobs.”

Boryeong Thermal Power Plant Unit 3, which was completed in 1993, was Korea’s first 500MW coal-fired thermal power plant for which the design and production of equipment and facilities, construction, and test operation were conducted with homegrown technology.