Karachi January 28 2022: The construction activity for setting up a 660 MW super critical, lignite coal-based power plant by Lucky Electric Power Company is near to completion and it has been synchronized with the national grid in November 2021.
The Project is currently under testing phase and it is targeted to achieve COD in February 2022.
The power plant is being built by Lucky Electric Power Company which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lucky Cement Limited. The 660 MW coal fired power plant of super critical technology is located in Deh Ghangiaro, Bin Qasim, Karachi.
The Construction of the project was started based on the planned CoD on 1st March 2021.
The advanced technology will consist of supercritical boilers, state of the art steam turbines and air emission controls including low-NOX burners, flue gas desulfurization, particulate collection, and continuous emission monitoring. The Project will be based on proven technologies and use advanced coal plant designs to achieve efficient operation and competitive tariff. The Project will be complete consisting of boiler, associated steam turbines, feed cycle, balance-ofplant equipment, electrical and l&C, material handling, coal receival, liquid fuel receival, coal piles, colony and other components.
The boiler will be designed to burn a wide variety of bituminous imported coal from many potential sources. This is addressed in the fuel source section. This provides a range of fuel that would support economical fuel purchase. Fuel sulfur content was also evaluated and a seawater flue gas desulfurization system can also be added, provided to burn higher content sulfur fuels which may be economically attractive to purchase. The warm-up and ignition fuel will be high speed diesel (#2 diesel) oil. This fuel will provide initial firing and will stabilize the combustion until the coal flames are stable, about 30% to 35% load. Details of the design depend on the specific supplier chosen for the Project.
An evaluation was performed to select the thermal cycle design. The higher Pressure of a supercritical cycle results in a higher efficiency than a subcritical cycle. A typical subcritical cycle has a maximum turbine throttle pressure of around 174 bar and a typical throttle pressure for a Supercritical cycle is around 248 bars. This difference in pressure results in a heat rate difference of up to approximately 2%. There are currently over 460 supercritical units in operation in China, Europe, Korea, Japan, and the United States, and a few in the developing countries. The European, Japanese, and recently, the Chinese suppliers have standardized on supercritical designs for units larger than 600 MW. With the High price of coal, the higher efficiency of the supercritical design justifies the higher capital cost. Capital cost of a supercritical versus a subcritical plant was also considered for the selection of the technology. The capital cost of a supercritical plant is generally approximately the same as, or 2% higher than, a subcritical plant. Based on the above lx 660 MW gross (ISO) unit is selected.
